Unlock a laptop

[Supershrimper]

My uncle passed away recently and going through his stuff we have stumbled upon his laptop. We are yet to locate a will so are hoping it may be held on this laptop, or at least provide a clue as to where it may be held.

Its a Lenovo laptop and the furthest we can get is to the login page.

Any ideas if this can be reset / removed to gain access to the laptop?

Several years ago you could extract the hard driver, add it to an external device and then access via USB but not sure if this works when the laptop had login information

 

[Bluesince67]

I can't help you personally, but I'm sure if you contact Computopia (just Google it), it's owned/run by a very helpful chap named Iain, I'm sure he'll have an answer for you. Good luck.

 

[Napster]

It can be done. Get onto Reddit

 

[Mr Plow]

If you're not very technically minded then might be best to take it into your local PC shop as suggested already otherwise you can use something like http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html to reset local accounts.

 

[Supershrimper]

Managed to access the laptop in via the backdoor method of adding an administrator using the cmd prompts and entering as a newly created administrator. Unfortunately the main account logged in with a Microsoft account, not a typical local account wherby I could have reset the password.

Luckily managed to view the majority of the files on the users account and nothing on there of any interest. Very long shot that the will would have been on the laptop but thought i'd give it a go.

Must admit. I did not realise just how easy it was to gain access to a laptop using the cmd prompts. Was logged in in about 5 minutes as an administrator.

 

[overseas shrimper]

Have you tried doing a probate record search for the potential will?

 

[Supershrimper]

We've done a search of the national will register, but that depends on the will bring registered. If it was just registered with a solicitor and not added to the register we've got no hope.

My father and uncle have been granted probate and are working it from there.

Amazing though how many people come out of the woodwork when they realise that no will had been located. Things like, "i was told I had provisions made in the will to have 25% of his house" etc