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I have never used this software before. My dad unexpectedly passed away one week ago today. His computer is locked. Me and my siblings want to gain access to see if there are pictures, any last words, letters anything. How can we unlock without a password? Can we at all? Who would I even go to about it to try? I’m lost and just looking for answers.

Ereca23
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    A few questions, is it a BIOS password or Operating system password? What is the operating system, Ubuntu? Your best chances may be to try and guess the password. Start with "qwerty", your names, etc. good luck. – C.S.Cameron May 30 '21 at 01:07
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    Providing OS & release details are a start. I'd likely boot a live media I know (eg. Ubuntu installation media & use the "Try Ubuntu" option) and look for clues.. is the drive encrypted? (if it is the problem is extremely impossible without guessing password), if it's not encrypted it should be easy using just the live media itself. – guiverc May 30 '21 at 01:19
  • I originally typed extremely unlikely in prior comment intending to switch to near impossible but changed only one word.. :( I understand breaching encrypted drives is possible, it's just beyond most of us, as it takes too long and has no guarantee for immense cost/effort – guiverc May 30 '21 at 02:05

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Here are some ideas that come to mind if you can't successfully guess his password, which may be written on a sticky note nearby, or in a nearby notebook or filing cabinet. These require some level of technical expertise, and rely on him NOT encrypting either his home directory or his entire hard drive.

  • See if there's a "switch user" option from the lock screen; if so, click on that & look for an option to log in as "guest". Once you're in, try using the file browser to get into /home/ , and drill down into whatever account looks most promising . I'm leaving out details here because a guest login usually isn't present, and even if so, his home directory may not allow access for a guest account. No sense getting into weeds on a long shot.

  • If no luck there, reboot his machine. If a password prompt comes up very early (<10 seconds?) and looks like simple colored text, then it's likely a BIOS password, and you should move to the next option below. But if it takes a bit (at least 30 seconds?) and looks fancy, it sounds like it's a password prompt from the operating system. If that's the case, you can try to boot the machine from a "Live USB" operating system, which will allow you to browse around your dad's hard drive without using his password-protected account. Instructions on creating the USB image are at https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows#1-overview , and booting it is described at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick/bootUSB .

  • Lastly, you might be able to pull the hard drive from his machine, and plug it into your own laptop/desktop with a USB adapter. Then you can access his hard drive from your own computer.

I suppose there are data recovery services you could try; they'd probably do the last option above, & send you a zipfile of what they could retrieve. (Usually "data recovery" is for hard drives that have malfunctioned, but you might get a discount rate for a functioning hard drive.)

laubster
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  • Ok so there is no guest. My dad was extremely brilliant and was a network engineer. I have tried some of the above but it doesn’t seem to get me anywhere. I’ve looked though flash drives and paper for passwords but he wasn’t one to write those things down. It has a part where you can press esc but it just does a memory test, hard drive check, and language. Other then that it doesn’t do anything else. – Ereca23 May 30 '21 at 19:56