Why is a drive visible when logged on as one user but not as another?

[Ted Byers]

My system was recently attacked by a hacker and consequently, due to the
damage caused, I had to reformat my C: drive and reinstall everything
beginning with W2K.

I have a secondary drive, 80 MB, divided into four equal partitions. The
third of these partitions is accessible when logged on as the system
administrator, but not in the account I created for when I am just doing
some programming or writing. When logged on using the latter account, I can
see the drive, but Windows Explorer tells me that it has a size of 0 bytes
when I right-click the drive and examine its properties. And should I click
on the drive, it tells me that access is denied. All other partitions on
the drive remain visible and accessible regardless of which account I use to
log on.

Can anyone explain why this is happening and what I can do to fix it?

Thanks,

Ted

 

[Ted Byers]

Wouldn't you know, shortly after I post the question, I find the fix myself.

I was examining the drive properties, as Administrator, to further
investigate the problem, and noticed that while the sharing settings were
identical for the drives or partitions I could see and those I coudln't see,
the security settings were not. I found that while the i: drive had entries
for the administrators group and for SYSTEM, it did not have entries for
either the other user id nor Everyone. I added Everyone to the list of
entries on the security page, and, like the other drives gave full control.
Lo and beold, when I then logged on using the other user id, I could see and
access i:.

Now the only mystery is why the security settings for that drive were
changed, because I know I didn't change them, and no one else has access to
the system.

Anyway, problem solved, for now.

Cheers,

Ted