Unusual one - Relative died and we cant access his laptop

Draeger

Draeger

Draeger

Soldato
Joined
4 Feb 2004
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Location
Écosse
A relative has passed away suddenly. No will, nothing as it was totally unexpected and he wasn't particularly old. He had a laptop which I've been given (being the PC buff in the family) as its got a password on it and we need to retrieve files and some docs from the laptop. I thought it would be as simple as booting Ophcrack from a USB drive and using that but I've hit a brick wall. Reason being is that its a Windows 8.1 OS and his user login is via a Microsoft Live account. I enabled the hidden Administrator account and got it to boot that way but I can't see any way to get into the files we need from there within the other user account (which is also listed as an Administrator account).

What options do I have? Can anything be done here at all? I'm thinking a bootable Linux Live disc or just whip the HDD out and slave it to a PC via USB? Anything 'Cloud based' from the MS Live account will obviously not be available but anything else on the HDD should be via an external enclosure, that right?
 
Not sure if this will work on W8 but you can try it and see what happens.

1. Log in to the computer using the Admin account you mentioned.
2. Once logged in press Windows Key + R.
3. Type "netplwiz" in to the box that appears without the quotes (").
4. If UAC pops up click YES.
5. Select the name of the account you wish to disable and remove the tick from the check box saying "user must enter a password to use this computer".
6. Click OK.

I have a feeling that it will prompt you for the password of the account you try to disable but it's worth a try I guess :), if that doesn't work try Hiren's Boot CD.

Stoner81.
 
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Cheers folks, used a Linux CD and once I got in there wasn't much on it at all. The My Documents, Contacts etc folders all show up as Empty in the C:\Users\Username folder. I assume that means almost everything was saved via the LiveID account to cloud storage or something?
 
If it was on his skydrive (onedrive) it'd be in c:\users\<username>\skydrive

worth checking if it's there, it's enabled by default. Otherwise I'd be Gmail/google docs or dropbox being the next things.
 
Doesn't seem to be any Skydrive folder anywhere.

The email login when the laptop boots up is for a Yahoo one? Not a Microsoft one?
 
Cheers guys. So am I right in thinking this:-

If he's been logging onto the laptop with the Yahoo email address/Live account would that mean that everything that he has saved since then has been saved to an online location? As I said, everything under his username that I can access using the Linux CD to browse the file directories is empty (Documents, Pictures etc) - so I take it if you sign into a Live account and your laptop boots to desktop that your folders and docs all look 'populated' with the stuff you have saved, but only if you are signed in to that Live account when you logon to the laptop? Otherwise it would just show empty folders?
 
Okay, little update. We've been going through some personal effects in the house and have found a bag of DVD's which are marked as 'Backup' in various different forms including Acer Recovery discs and some which look like Windows Backup discs in .MIG file format. I downloaded a program called 'MIG Recovery & Viewer' but when I try and open a .MIG file it just sits and does nothing apart from saying 'Opening MIG file'. I left it for a couple of hours in case it was just slow but to no avail. Does this sort of thing take ages to open a MIG file or is there any other way to view these files?
 
Fairly sure 8.1 applies Bitlocker encryption by default in which case you'll need to run it through the MS account recovery process.
 
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