Need to pull data from old Windows machine

Question

Customer dropped a Win7 laptop off that they showed conclusively that they own...but they don't remember the password for the only account. Machine has not been in regular use for 4+ years, and reformatting and reinstall of the operating system can't be done until the data is safely duplicated to another drive.

How should I proceed?

This is pretty basic. Plug the drive into another computer, copy the files off. So long as the hard drive is functioning this should work just fine. It is very unlikely they were using full disk encryption at that point, and if the drive isn't functioning it's going to be beyond your ability to repair. — music2myear, Sep 24 '19 at 01:59
Besides directly copying the drive (assuming it isn't encrypted), in theory you could also blank the admin password with utility like [Offline NT Password & Registry Editor](https://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/). But for simple data copying, there likely isn't much point. — Anaksunaman, Sep 24 '19 at 02:17
The marked duplicate is only one part (a secondary part) of the context of this question. — music2myear, Sep 25 '19 at 00:14

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 24 '19 at 02:02

If the drive is functioning and there is no FDE (Full Disk Encryption), just plug the drive into another computer and find and copy the files you wish to recover.

Alternatively you could use a bootable USB stick to 'bring the other OS to this computer', as it were.

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 24 '19 at 15:15

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You must be having one of these: External Enclosure

So, if the laptop does indeed belong to that person, then take out the HDD & plug it into this enclosure and duplicate all the data from the drive.

After copying all the data present on the HDD, put the HDD back into the laptop and then do a clean install of windows (7 or 8.1 or 10 whichever the user will prefer)

edited Sep 24 '19 at 15:15

JW0914

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answered Sep 24 '19 at 05:16

Elmo

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score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 24 '19 at 12:08

@music2myear has a good comment, and should have posted it as an answer.

Plug the drive into another computer, copy the files off.

If you don't want to pull the drive for some reason, then you can boot from a live Linux CD or USB stick and get at the files that way (copy to an external or network drive).

However, the simplest way off all is probably just to reset the Windows password to a known value (even easier than trying to recover it):

I did post it as answer. Pretty much right after I made the comment. :D — music2myear, Sep 25 '19 at 00:12

Need to pull data from old Windows machine

3 Answers3