From: mariasophia@comprehension.com   
      
   knuttle wrote:   
   > My brother in law die.  We have his computer but it is locked with a   
   > pass word.   
   >   
   > If we pull the hard drive, and place it in an external drive enclosure,   
   > can we unlock the drive so it can be used as a primary drive in another   
   > computer?   
      
   Hi Keith,   
      
   I'm not sure if my suggestion below is correct (which others will correct   
   if I'm wrong) but if you simply make it the second drive in any other PC, I   
   would think that OS (Windows, Linux) can access the file system just fine.   
      
   Even with the same PC, you should be able to boot to a Linux flash drive.   
      
   Then you should be able to r/w access the hard disk, although Paul and I   
   have found, years ago, only certain files in C:\Windows\ are not writable.   
      
   Re-reading your post to make sure I'm answering the question for you, if   
   you only want to use the drive itself, and not its contents, then you can   
   boot to a flash stick (I just did it yesterday) and format the drive and   
   reinstall the operating system.   
      
   I just did it using Rufus where all you need is an 8GB or bigger flash   
   stick. that way you don't have to remove anything.   
      
   As I recall, it never asks for a password so you can "repair" the old   
   drive, but it probably won't wipe out the password.   
      
   I used to wipe out passwords in the Windows XP days (or was in it Win95),   
   but I haven't done it in years. But you can likely wipe it out even now.   
      
   Hope this helps. If not, someone else (like Paul) will know the answers.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)