Need help.. Father passed away.

[Devil Dog]

Hi all, I need help from computer literate individuals. My father passed away unexpectedly last week and we just buried him today.

He was a computer programmer by trade and he had all of his passwords written down in case of something like this happening, but his main computer
which has Windows 7 on it, we are unable to login to the administrator account to retrieve vital financial info.

Anyone know of any programs that are able to hack into admin accounts or reset passwords?

Thanks in advance.

 

[draggar]

I'm sorry for your loss.

Windows 7? The beta?

There are some hacks / admin tools out there that can help with this for all the other OSs, I'm sure there's one for Win7, if not, try contacting MS support.

 

[Focus]

I'm very sorry for your loss Darren, God bless you and the family my brother. Good luck. ray:

 

[jasdon11]

Darren, deep condolences for you and your family.

I'm sorry I can't help with your technical issue.

 

[Makis77]

My deepest condolences for the loss of your father.
Regarding the tech issue, trying taking out the hard drive, connecting into another pc as second hard drive and search it.

 

[nattydomain]

very sorry for the loss. I lost my mom out of the blue in 2005 so its never easy....

Regarding the password issue, here is a link I found that may help you....

Jah Guide & bless!

http://www.petri.co.il/forgot_administrator_password.htm

 

[Sonny Banks]

My deepest condolences for the loss of your father.

 

[draggar]

My deepest condolences for the loss of your father.
Regarding the tech issue, trying taking out the hard drive, connecting into another pc as second hard drive and search it.

Excellent idea if you need the docs etc.. (especially if it's not encrypted).

If needed, you can get an IDE/SATA to USB adapter for under $20 at places like NewEgg etc..

 

[south]

I'm very sorry for your loss Darren, God bless you and the family my brother. Good luck. ray:

Ditto to that. Peace to you & your family.

My deepest condolences for the loss of your father.
Regarding the tech issue, trying taking out the hard drive, connecting into another pc as second hard drive and search it.

This is the first thing to try, definitely.

In lieu of that, the next thing would be BARTPE :http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ to try to read the drive, and connect to a network to copy data.

Finally, this is what I use to reset passwords for my clients: http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

Works great for xp, and have used it with success on a couple of Vista systems as well.
HOWEVER! If the filesystem is encrypted and you reset the password, you WILL LOSE ACCESS to the data! I have never tried it with Win7, and I have no idea what filesystem they are using. You should really try the first 2 before, to try to read the data.

 

[stewie]

Sorry to hear about your father.

 

[WebsiteTraders.Com]

Sorry To hear that.

 

[Devil Dog]

Thank you all for the help and condoloences. That's why this place is so great.

I will try all your suggestions later on today.

 

[ecomindia]

Sorry to hear this.

If all thing fails, get in touch with MS Support.
They may irritate (as legal procedure , may ask for doc proof of relations etc), but will be the best unit to look help for.

Expirementing with the hardware might put risk to the data as well.

 

[cursal]

Wishing Peace for you and your family in the difficult times.

Have to agree with ecomindia. Get support from the top.
Or, if you can, back up everything before you go data mining or password cracking.

 

[Gerry]

Peace and comfort to you and your family.

 

[Theo]

My deepest condolences about your father.

As Makis said, remove the HD and connect it to another computer to access it. Most likely nothing is encrypted.

 

[NameMatters]

Sorry to hear this.. My deepest condolences for the loss of your father.

 

[jaxonrice]

My deepest condolences to you and your family.

You might want to try the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset v6.0 for Vista.

Info: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/dart.aspx

It is not free, but you can find a copy on Torrent Sites if you are that way inclined (I have sent you a pm).

It contains a utility called locksmith that lets you reset the admin password on a Vista install. My experience with Windows 7 is that its internals are very similar to Vista so there is a good chance this will work with the Windows 7 beta.

 

[Seraphim]

My condolences Darren. Good luck with the computer issue.

 

[fab]

My deepest condolences as well. The hard drive idea is good, and I believe disconnecting the battery, and or some of the hardware should work. We had a similar problem, and my nephew fixed it that way.