Retrieving IE v11 passwords

(A version of this might have been created earlier while I was trying to sign up)

Tale of migrating Windows7 to Windows10

Abbreviated cast of characters:

 – me

 – Mother-in-Law, aka Roz

 – sister-in-law

 – Craig, boyfriend of Kathy

The computer is a Dell something or other vintage from ~2009. Before our visit, we got info from Craig & Kathy that the computer was dying and that we should be ready to go shopping for a new one. Roz says that she has copies of all of the passwords, etc. We get to Roz’s house on Tuesday and we go shopping on Wednesday before Thanksgiving and settle on an HP, buy and get it back and start setting things up. I haven’t seen any failures yet.

Things go well at first, that is until we get to gmail. I need to say here that gmail isn’t the first email account, first she had one with time-warner/RoadRunner(?). The password that is written down for gmail doesn’t work. I ask Roz about it and she says that logging in is the password for email. So how do I get the saved password from Windows7 and Internet Explorer v11. Craig finds IE PassView, they discuss that people have problems running that since virus scanners figure that behavior looks like a virus, I verify that yes indeed Windows Defender deletes and doesn’t let it execute.

I propose that she create a new gmail account and have everyone use the new one. She isn’t going to go for that, very upset.

So how do I:

 – either get the saved passwords from IE v11?

 – suspend Defender so that IE PassView can reveal the passwords? Once the passwords are recovered, etc. the machine will be reformatted/reused with Linux, etc.

BTW, the last day we were there, I see a failure. I’m guessing this isn’t a computer issue but an intermittent drive failure. A session with SpinRite might do wonders for the device.