Most of these reports are about preview builds of Windows.

That said, surely you have seen recommendations from Microsoft to try their Office package and such oil up. It’s like that, but more intrusive.

I can’t believe Microsoft is making me switch from Windows to Mac and Linux, but here we are.

Yes, unless it is encrypted, in which case you need a way to decode that. You can even boot an OS from a USB thumb drive to recover files from a hard drive.

Is moving the drive to another computer as a secondary drive an option? Or put it in a separate USB enclosure? That way you don’t need to boot it at all, unless it’s encrypted or something.