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If the partition is not accessible to your user account, that explains the free space etc not showing in the ‘Computer’ window. Enable the ‘default’ Administrator account of Windows 7 and check if that account can access this partition.

1. Click Start, type ‘cmd’ in the search field, right click cmd from the list above and choose ‘Run as Administrator’.
2. In the ‘Command Prompt’ window, type the command ‘net user administrator /active:yes’ without the quotes and press enter. This enables Windows 7’s default Administrator account.
3. Restart when prompted.
4. The system will automatically restart in normal mode and you will see an option to login to the ‘Administrator’ account (which you just enabled).
5. Try to access the new partition. If it does not contain anything useful, you can right click and format it. If it does, back up all the data to an external drive.

If you want to access it using your regular account too, log off and login to your regular administrator account, and follow these steps (might take some time depending on the size of the partition):

1. Right click the partition in the ‘Computer’ window, go to “Properties> Security> Advanced> Owner” and change the “Owner” to the current user account (to check the username, click ‘Start’ and look for the name at the top of the start menu).
2. Then, get back to the ‘Security’ tab in ‘Properties’ and check the box under ‘Allow’ next to ‘Full Control’ for all the users listed under ‘Group or user name’.
3. Click ‘Add’, type ‘everyone’ in the box and click ‘Check Names’. Click OK.
4. ‘Allow’ full control to ‘Everyone’ too.

You can then disable the default ‘Admin’ by running the command ‘net user administrator /active:no’. Hope it helped.

Here’s to Good Karma