Re: A subject close to my heart
"She had a recent Windows 10 notebook, one of those with no discrete hard drive, just flash chips soldered to the motherboard, for which nobody knows the login, so I've been unable to access that at all - due to the EFI BIOS I can't even boot from a USB Drive or Flash stick so that's essentially useless now.
If she stored her various account details on there, we'll never know."
Sorry to hear that. Someone hot on windows might be able to help. EFI Bios doesn't stop you booting from USB. You just need to enable it. If its not encrypted as would likely be the case you can just do a fresh install of windows to access the disk. If it is encrypted then the key gets backed up to OneDrive by default if she logged in via an MS account.
Even if a Bios password is set you can get it cleared at a cost by replacing a chip on the mb in most cases.
Can i suggest you also check all her known emails on haveibeenpwned.com - you might well find some passwords are out there - people mostly use the same or similar everywhere. The underlying lists can be found on bit torrent etc.
And failing that then a company like Vogon (no relation!) will get the data off the disk at a cost.
Hope that helps.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
