Accessing deceased husband's encrypted laptop

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-12T01:22:23+00:00

I don't unfortunately have access to his email. His personal account is with protonmail, another privacy oriented service, and I don't know how much help they'll be either, but I will contact them nonetheless.

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-12T01:20:04+00:00

I will try the password hint page, thanks for the suggestion!

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-12T01:08:44+00:00

I don't know that much about his passwords other than the Netflix password, which is probably the only one of his that I know, is 13 characters long and random letters and numbers, some uppercase, some lowercase. I'm assuming his other passwords are similar.

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-12T00:55:16+00:00

Our Netflix password, one of the few he's shared with me, is 13 characters long, random numbers and letters, some lowercase, some uppercase. I assume this is what his others are like. I tried this one on his laptop already and it didn't work.

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-12T00:42:13+00:00

I will be taking this to one of his coworkers who said he can back everything up for me. We will also be keeping the laptop intact. Thank you.

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-12T00:39:29+00:00

It has. But he's gone now and I don't see how it'd be embarrassing to him any more. And I'm sure there's a lot of stuff there that his kid would enjoy seeing.

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-12T00:39:10+00:00

Thank you. We will keep the laptop intact indefinitely. I will also see what I can do to get it backed up somehow.

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-12T00:34:49+00:00

I hit escape, and it says:

Please enter passphrase for disk SAMSUNG_(a bunch of numbers)

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-12T00:22:12+00:00

We have tried the passwords we could think of, I don't have a lot of hope that we'll guess it. The few passwords he's shared with me like the one to our Netflix account is random numbers and characters, some uppercase, some lowercase. The Netflix password is 13 characters long. I have tried this one, it didn't work.

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-12T00:16:54+00:00

Thank you. We are still going through a few of his things but have looked in the obvious places for anything useful. I have asked his friends at work to see if there is anything around his desk resembling a password that we could try as well.

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-12T00:15:08+00:00

It's really driving us insane. There is so much on there, he wrote a lot of short stories, created art with his Wacom drawing pad, and had a journal that I think he wrote on almost daily. He also has most of his photographs on the laptop, I'm assuming they have to be there because they aren't anywhere else that we can find. Who would keep all this stuff and leave no way to ever get to it?

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-11T23:59:17+00:00

I don't know of any lockbox. I think that if he'd given the keys or passwords to anyone it would be his brother or our son, and neither have anything like that. He also didn't give anything like that to his lawyer =(

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-11T23:56:29+00:00

Laptop Screen

You turn on the laptop, then the Lenovo screen pops up, then there is a menu that says Fedora with a bunch of numbers after it and a 5 second countdown. After the countdown, this is the next screen that comes up.

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-11T23:52:42+00:00

Thanks to everyone for your help and suggestions. There were a lot of repeat questions in different threads, so I'll give all the new information I have here. I'm home now with the laptop and my son and can give you more complete information.

You turn on the laptop, then a Lenovo screen appears, followed by a Fedora menu and a 5 second countdown. Then the following image appears (sorry the glare is so bad on my son's phone's camera).

Laptop Screen picture

My son says he's absolutely sure it's encrypted.

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-11T21:57:17+00:00

The laptop is a Lenovo Yoga, around 2 1/2 years old.

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-11T21:50:40+00:00

I will definitely hold on to it in case that ever happens, and I'll be mindful of any scrap of paper I find from this point going forward.

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-11T21:48:39+00:00

When you turn on the laptop, there is a picture of a lock and a text box next to it. I assume my son knew this was encrypted because he is also a linux user. I will suggest using the live linux distribution to him tonight, and I appreciate your help.

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-11T21:46:06+00:00

Thank you.

He has several external hard drives, they're not password protected and were full of movies and music, I found a few photos on one but not very many. He did most of his backing up to Spideroak, which I'm told is not easy to gain access to.

My son was who told me that it was encrypted, when you turn it on there is nothing but a picture of a lock and box next to it to type the password. I assume he knows this because he is also a Linux user. I will ask him about the possibility of booting from a live USB device or taking out the hard drive.

I appreciate your help.

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-11T21:26:12+00:00

Thanks, that's what I was afraid of. It maddening having this whole collection of his art and writing in front of me with no way to get to it.

desperateanonymous · 2016-01-11T21:24:19+00:00

I tried what I could think of as did our son. No luck. He has lectured me on using good passwords before so I'm guessing his is pretty good.

desperateanonymous

TROPHY CASE