I inherited a laptop with a broken screen and it is password locked.

[monkeyboy8685]

My wife's aunt had a laptop that the screen went out on shortly before she passed and we can not find the password or pin for it. Is there anyway to get to the files and recover pictures and videos from it. I can hook the laptop to a monitor and it still boots up. It is still running windows 8. The email that she used was through her isp and her subscription to them has been deactivated since she passed. We have tried every possible password that she has used for everything else and there is nothing written down. I wasn't sure if I could take the drive out and put it in an enclosure to hook to another pc and get the files that way. I also tried using Microsoft password recovery and they are denying our request saying we can't provide enough info to prove our case. We would like to try to use this laptop again either as a second "desktop" with a monitor or hooked to a TV and use it for retro games.

[alex.ausmus]

Most of the documents will be locked by Windows security features even if you try to put the drive in a separate  PC.

[Lightwreather]

So, we can't help you bypass any kind of security feature (according to the CS)

However, if the drive is not encrypted it might be possible to retrieve the photos by hooking it up to a different PC or booting into a Linux Live environment

If you don't care about that, just reinstall windows wiping everything

[Needfuldoer]

If you boot the laptop off a Linux live stick, you should be able to at least copy the Documents, Pictures, Desktop etc folders off the laptop to a flash drive. (That is, assuming the drive isn't encrypted with something like BitLocker.)

[monkeyboy8685]

I was able to hook the hdd to another computer and get all of the pictures off of it. I am now going to wipe the drive and reinstall windows and try to find a purpose for a functional laptop with a busted screen. Thank you for the suggestions.

[RollyShed]

1 hour ago, monkeyboy8685 said:

I was able to hook the hdd to another computer and get all of the pictures off of it. I am now going to wipe the drive and reinstall windows and try to find a purpose for a functional laptop with a busted screen. Thank you for the suggestions.

If you don't want to use it as a portable laptop connecting another monitor is a way of using the computing side of it.

 

We had someone break the screen on the loan laptop they had. We also had the same type with a dud screen driver chip. The good screen was swapped over and a happy laptop user again.

 

If you hadn't managed to recover the files then as  Needfuldoer said, use a Linux live stick and copy and move the files and folders to another disk.

I'm doing it regularly as I install Linux on new, usually SSDs and fit them to laptops or desktops and then copy across the Windows files and folders for the person who's computer it is.

The easy way to do it is using a SATA to USB cable on 2-1/2" disks or with an adaptor for more power if a 3-1/2 disk.