Windows 7 laptop password

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A woman I know in her early 30's had her husband die in an accident.  She wants to access his Windows 7 laptop that has a password on it.

I know there are many methods of cracking Windows 7 passwords and resetting them, but has anybody actually done it recently? The methods I've tried so far have failed.
I have been able to boot off of a Windows 7 USB stick and get to a command prompt, but have not been able to crack the password or reset it. 

I wonder if it would be better to use a Windows 10 usb stick stick to crack the Windows 7 computer?

I don't live in the same country as the woman, so it is tricky.  If I had physical access, I would pop out the hard drive and have my way with it. 

I've done a lot of searching for methods, and software which is supposed to work that did not.    I have tried versons of UUKeys, Kon-Boot, and Ophcrack.

I don't know if it  would be easier to crack the password, or reset it.  Resetting it hasn't worked for me either.  A funny thing is that now Microsoft has everybody's login passwords which they can use to lock you out of your own computer.

People should also be aware that no password prevents files from being accessed on a computer.  The only way to protect files is to encrypt them.  Almost nobody bothers to encrypt files. 

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Get Lazesoft Recovery Suite Home Edition and make a bootable cd or usb with the program. After booting, there should be an option for you to immediately browse the laptop's hard disk (and copy things to another flash drive or hard disk) or use the reset password function (look for the username, don't choose Guest or Administrator) to reset the password of her husband's user account if you wish to log in to the account.

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Windows 7 is easy to crack.... http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ <-- The Ultimate Boot CD

On that CD, there is an app called NT Password Recovery Manager I believe it is. This is the tool that I have used many, many times to simply remove a Windows password to grant you easy access.