The recycling bin is damaged and isn't responding well to repairs.
The recycling bin is damaged and isn't responding well to repairs.
Feeling red but I’m worried about Uncle! I need some advice. My C: drive is acting up, saying the Recycle bin gets messed up every few minutes. I can’t fix it myself. Here’s how I ended up here: I struggled to free space on my P: partition and checked the recycle bin, but it wasn’t empty. Since I’m using a dual-boot system with both Windows 11 and 10, sometimes the bin doesn’t clear right away. Usually, just deleting the folder and letting Windows rebuild it works. I tried that and restarted, but the $Recycle.bin on C: still isn’t clean, and I keep getting errors.
What I’ve done:
- Deleted recycle bins manually in Explorer while using Safe Mode.
- Ran a full check disk after rebooting.
- Used Tweaking.com’s AIO tool to fix bin issues.
- Booted into Linux Mint USB and removed the folder—though it shows the folder isn’t empty, deleting other partitions’ bins helped.
- Executed a batch script in Safe Mode as admin.
- Tried Hiren’s rescue USB environment.
I also used a command line to delete all extra recycle bins and their folders. This is important if you often have multiple bins in your partitions. If they’re not empty, Windows won’t clear them properly. Make sure the folder has your user ID on it—otherwise, it won’t be deleted.
If you need more help, just let me know what you’re seeing when you run these steps.
Launch the admin CMD interface and input "d /s /q C:$Recycle.bin". Check the results.
Voila! It worked. That's the command I was looking for. I am indeed embarrassed now. I didn't try that because I assumed my script was more powerful and if it couldn't delete it than how could the DOS "delete" command work? Grrrrrr. Thank you! For reference you have a typo: It's: del /s /q C:$Recycle.bin I also, needed to "CD.." twice into C:\ instead of C:\System32 where I'm dumped when I open command prompt as Admin . I also booted into Safe Mode first. Just FYI for others who come across this later.
It functioned correctly. The issue lies elsewhere. It appears the script was executed from a different directory than expected. Changing the path with a command like CD C:\ might help. The full route C:\Recycle.bin should suffice, but previous runs failed due to location mismatches. I'm unsure if Windows 10 affects CMD behavior significantly. The script still works on HDDs occasionally. I'll try a small test and share the results.