Windows 7: WD 1TB Drive; Is not accessible/Access Denied

Greetings!
First Post.

Problem is that I'm unable to access my WD Drive. I get a message that says Access Denied. This drive was originally formatted with a version of VISTA using recovery disks. I then went over top with Windows 7. I no longer use the drive as my main OS but rather as a storage drive and a backup OS. I can still boot the OS on this drive but can not access any data stored outside of the OS environment. Under My Computer, while I'm booted into the OS on this Drive(back-up OS), you see a partition called Reserved Partion. This reserved partition is the partion that the OS is operating within. You also see another partition that is presumably the rest of the drive and also unaccessible.

Here is what happened leading up to this issue.



1) I wanted to remove clutter, mainly my Windows.old file(formerly recovered VISTA)
2) I tried deleting this folder
3) I got a msg saying that I could not delete certain folders because I didn't have permission to do so. I checked the permissions under the properties of the folder to see that permissions were being held by a User that I didn't recognize(TrustedContentID) or something like that.
4) I opened the Windows.old Folder and started deleting random folders in hopes that I could delete the bulk of the folder and just ignore what I could not.
5) I found that most of the folders contained items that I did not have permission to delete.
6) I thought this was weird and decided to re-do the ownership of the drive. During this process there were a few error msgs that said there were folders that I could not change the ownership of....access is denied....I hit continue several times as the msg repeated itself. Finally the ownership change was complete.
7) unable to access drive.

I've tried unsuccessfully many times to change the permissions of the drive. I've also tried booting into my back up OS to change the ownership of the drive from there too...no luck.

This is my problem. I would really appreciate some feedback or even questions that prompt for more information...
Thanks!

Run Disk Cleanup. If it's not detected that way, format the drive. It would take an insanely long time to take ownership of everything in order to delete it.

I walked around it by activating my "hidden" admin account. Problem solved.

+1, Johnathon.

Evols, Disk Cleanup is the intended method of removing the windows.old folder. Just point it in the right direction and let it go. You should rehide the hidden admin.

James

The only reason keeping the hidden admin account hidden is if you didn't do a clean install of a retail Windows version yourself but instead bought the machine with Windows pre-loaded, the OEM may have done some configuring that is based off of the hidden admin account staying hidden. Just my 2 off-topic cents.

I'd be interested if you could elaborate on this?

Back in my retail pc tech days, I came across a number of machines running OEM versions of Vista there were a couple of times we enabled the "super admin" account as we called it to perform tasks. After doing so, we found that (not always) OEM software didn't function properly and started causing problems. We also found one time that removing the super admin account from outside of windows disabled all of the accounts altogether (this was on a dell laptop). I haven't come across it these days but I also don't work in that environment anymore.

I wasn't actually thinking from that point of view (esp. having not owned an OEM machine since the early 90s), but is there any reason not to rehide the account? I myself wouldn't want that account visible should others have access to the machine.

James

Johnathan,
There is something in what you say that rings a bell. Given that most OSs come installed on OEM machines it would be interesting to know if others have experienced this sort of issue.

The user names people create on OEM machines today when they set them up have full admin rights under that account. Unless you're trying to cheat the system, there really isn't any reason to keep it unhidden. Plus, If malware got a hold of that account it would have free reign with file and system permissions and there'd be nothing you can do about it.

Same.