Windows Diagnostic death loop trauma

[RovinD]

Greetings wonderful people!

I recently tried upgrading ram in an old laptop and it conflicted with the AMD 8400 driver. Over a few days of putting back old ram, loading a different driver, disassembling and putting in new ram and achieving no success, I had it back to normal and thought I'd try getting more diags.

Yeah, I did that MSCONFIG thing, but because I always use a pin to login, I can't remember my password to get a command prompt, or anything at all. I'm effectively locked out of the machine, which is nice 😵

I have a usb key drive and an ssd turning up today to attempt several things.

Question 1: If I boot off the USB to attempt recovery or repair, will it still require authentication on an account on associated with the machine?

Question 2: if I install the SSD and do a fresh install of Windows 10 (yey) will my authentication key still be valid? My aim would be to then copy my music and photos off the original drive.

To reiterate, I don't have old password for this lappy and have been unsuccessful in booting into any safe modes, having tried a ridiculously huge number of times, so telling me to try that is appreciated, but ain't gonna fly 😀

Considered feedback gratefully appreciated!

Thanks 👍