Accessing the computer [duplicate]

Question

I have my son's laptop. He passed away this year and I am trying to access his computer. I dob't have the password or the email address he used. It is asking me for an authentication code when i try to go in as administrator.

Can you help me?

Answer 1

You can do this in following ways:

The standard way

1. When booting up press SHIFT (in systems 9.10 "karmic" or later) or ESC (in systems 9.04 "jaunty" or earlier) at the grub prompt and use the arrow keys to select the rescue mode option and press enter.
2. The file system may be read only (it is in all currently supported releases). Remount as read write `mount -rw -o remount /
3. his will boot the system in rescue mode and you should arrive at a prompt that looks like this root@something
4. To reset your password type this in passwd <username> Press return, then you will be prompted to enter and confirm a new password.
5. Once you are done resetting your password you can than switch back to the normal GUI mode by putting this in init 2

If if appears to boot normally, but you see a message that says:Give root password for maintenance (or type Control-D to continue):

then you will have to try a different trick below.

The Other Way

If the "Standard Way" does not work for you and you recieve the "Give root password for maintenance" message, you can recover your password using the following steps

1. Reboot your computer

2. Press SHIFT or ESC at the grub prompt (as earlier).

3. Select your image.

4. Highlight the line that begins kernel and press 'e' to edit

5. Go to the very end of the line, change the ro to rw and add init=/bin/bash press enter, then press b to boot your system. Your system will boot up to a passwordless root shell.

6. Type in passwd username

7. Set your password.

8. Type in reboot

This was the most suitable way i found for you from here and if this method does not work for you, try reding answer at How do i reset a lost administrative password

Answer 2

If you have a usb or dvd written with a linux distro that uses live boot such as the main Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or many others, you can use that to easily access the hard drive bypassing any need for passwords. This uses a gui point and click if you are not experienced with Linux. Simply put it in, reboot and click on the available drives in the file manager to explore the contents.

There are many guides for writing a image to usb if you do not have one accessible depending on the OS used (windows, mac, linux)

However, if encryption was used I'm afraid you are effectively out of luck unless you discover the password.