By passing my dead cousins windows 10 password

[steven00o]

My cousin died in a car accident, now his mom wants me to bypass his windows 10 password, I realize that I can just take out the HDD but in this instance, I would prefer not too so if anyone could give me a method that would be appreciated 

In the instance the post gets deleted then I understand the reasons 

[samcool55]

Is it a local user or has he his hotmail or whatever account linked?

Local users can be bypassed, linked ones not afaik.

[Julian5]

My most honest opinion would be to bin the HDD, I'm sure your cousin would not have liked people looking at his stuff. However, you can use any software like john the ripper to access it. 

 

Best Regards,

Julian

[steven00o]

Just now, samcool55 said:

Is it a local user or has he his hotmail or whatever account linked?

Local users can be bypassed, linked ones not afaik.

I feel like its a local user the normal scenario of sorts he just added a simple password there nothing complicated since he was not the most tech savvy guy

[steven00o]

1 minute ago, Julian5 said:

My most honest opinion would be to bin the HDD, I'm sure your cousin would not have liked people looking at his stuff. However, you can use any software like john the ripper to access it. 

 

Best Regards,

Julian

I totally understand the reasons but I also realize that I have to respect the 60yr old woman's wishes I am gonna make sure that anything related to private parts is gonna stay hidden but pictures and documents will sadly have to come up 

[Fetzie]

A local administrator user can take ownership of the folders that belong to microsoft account users.

[Tsuki]

On 6/1/2017 at 9:33 AM, samcool55 said:

Local users can be bypassed, linked ones not afaik.

totally can if you do it right (not with the following method, and i wont detail how in this thread, but if you wanna know you can pm me)

 

but to reset his LOCAL password do the following commands have quotes around them, dont type the quotes

 

boot to recovery and enter command prompt

'copy c:\windows\system32\sethc.exe c:\'

'copy /y c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe c:\windows\system32\sethc.exe'

restart your computer

press 'shift' 5 times at the login screen

'net user username password'     (replace the username with his username, and replace password with a new password)

exit command prompt

log into his account with the new password

[SageOfSpice]

Just activate the elevated administrator account in CMD.

Hardly anybody ever cares enough to lock it.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Make a bootable Linux USB stick and a Win10 USB installer

boot the PC from the Linux stick

grab the non-sensitive files from the user folder

Turn the PC off (or reset it)

boot from the Windows installer

do a fresh install so that the PC can be used again by whoever inherits or buys it

 

... or at least that's what I'd do with 8.1 or lower, no idea if MS got their act together when it comes to securing personal folders in Win10 as I don't ever work on the latter. 

 

My condoleances, by the way