How do you really empty the recycle bin.?

How do you empty the recycle bin. I just now followed the MS
instructions, right clicked on the desktop icon, and clicked on Empty
Recyle Bin, and it asked, Do you want to delete 28 items? Yes, but what
about the hundreds or thousands of other files?

Or were they all joined together into 28 files?


I've had this HDD for 4 years or more and I've never emptied the bin,
except just now. And I know there are far more things in it because I
watched the names of files during last night's virus scan. For an hour
or two they started with something like $recyclebin.

So where are they and how do I delete them?


------------
Last month I did a virus scan and it took a long time. I noticed that
over an hour was spent checking files in the recycle bin, and I
regretted not emptying it before the scan.

I tried to empty all but the last 3 days deletions and found only a few
items.

Last night I scanned again and I forgot about my plan to empty the bin.

Again, 1 or 2 hours scanning files that will never be used.


In all these years I've just restored from the bin either never or once,
and the once was right away.

In article ,
says...

How do you empty the recycle bin. I just now followed the MS
instructions, right clicked on the desktop icon, and clicked on Empty
Recyle Bin, and it asked, Do you want to delete 28 items? Yes, but what
about the hundreds or thousands of other files?

Or were they all joined together into 28 files?


I've had this HDD for 4 years or more and I've never emptied the bin,
except just now. And I know there are far more things in it because I
watched the names of files during last night's virus scan. For an hour
or two they started with something like $recyclebin.

So where are they and how do I delete them?


------------
Last month I did a virus scan and it took a long time. I noticed that
over an hour was spent checking files in the recycle bin, and I
regretted not emptying it before the scan.

I tried to empty all but the last 3 days deletions and found only a few
items.

Last night I scanned again and I forgot about my plan to empty the bin.

Again, 1 or 2 hours scanning files that will never be used.


In all these years I've just restored from the bin either never or once,
and the once was right away.

The recyclebin acts like a queue. When it becomes full the oldest files
are thrown away to make room for newer files. It should never exceed the
size limitation that is user setable in some dialogue box somewhere on
system.

I have no idea why a scan would take so long on recyclebin specifically.
I would think it'd be treated same as any other folder even though some
of it's attributes may be restrictive.

On 1/9/20 12:08 PM, micky wrote:
How do you empty the recycle bin. I just now followed the MS
instructions, right clicked on the desktop icon, and clicked on Empty
Recyle Bin, and it asked, Do you want to delete 28 items? Yes, but what
about the hundreds or thousands of other files?

Or were they all joined together into 28 files?


I've had this HDD for 4 years or more and I've never emptied the bin,
except just now. And I know there are far more things in it because I
watched the names of files during last night's virus scan. For an hour
or two they started with something like $recyclebin.

So where are they and how do I delete them?


------------
Last month I did a virus scan and it took a long time. I noticed that
over an hour was spent checking files in the recycle bin, and I
regretted not emptying it before the scan.

I tried to empty all but the last 3 days deletions and found only a few
items.

Last night I scanned again and I forgot about my plan to empty the bin.

Again, 1 or 2 hours scanning files that will never be used.


In all these years I've just restored from the bin either never or once,
and the once was right away.

It's my experience that if you connect an external drive of any type and
delete something it goes into that recycle bin as well as the one on the
external drive.
If you disconnect the external, then you can't get those files out of
the recycle bin since the drive isn't there.

Or at least that's my take on it. I've had to reconnect all my drives
and clean the recycle bin over and over until I got the right drive in.

Al

On Thu, 09 Jan 2020 12:08:48 -0500, micky wrote:

How do you empty the recycle bin. I just now followed the MS
instructions, right clicked on the desktop icon, and clicked on Empty
Recyle Bin, and it asked, Do you want to delete 28 items? Yes, but what
about the hundreds or thousands of other files?

Or were they all joined together into 28 files?


I've had this HDD for 4 years or more and I've never emptied the bin,
except just now. And I know there are far more things in it because I
watched the names of files during last night's virus scan. For an hour
or two they started with something like $recyclebin.

So where are they and how do I delete them?


Here are two possibilities...

1. If you delete a folder containing (say) 100 files, that counts
as one "item" in the Recycle Bin. But your AV still counts it
as 100 "files".

To delete the 100 *files*, just delete the one *item* in the
Recycle Bin. You don't need to do anything special for this
case.

Open the Recycle Bin. You can see the folder you deleted, but
you cannot see the files inside it. They are all one "item" as
far as the Recycle Bin is concerned.


2. If your computer has more than one Windows user account, then
each user has their own separate Recycle Bin. You can only see
and empty items in your own Recycle Bin. But your AV may be
scanning the Recycle Bins of other users as well.

To delete items from other users' Recycle Bins, log on as the
other user to empty their Recycle Bin for them.


------------
Last month I did a virus scan and it took a long time. I noticed that
over an hour was spent checking files in the recycle bin, and I
regretted not emptying it before the scan.

I tried to empty all but the last 3 days deletions and found only a few
items.

Last night I scanned again and I forgot about my plan to empty the bin.

Again, 1 or 2 hours scanning files that will never be used.


In all these years I've just restored from the bin either never or once,
and the once was right away.


--
Kind regards
Ralph

On 09/01/2020 17:08, micky wrote:
How do you empty the recycle bin. I just now followed the MS
instructions, right clicked on the desktop icon, and clicked on Empty
Recyle Bin, and it asked, Do you want to delete 28 items? Yes, but what
about the hundreds or thousands of other files?

Or were they all joined together into 28 files?


I've had this HDD for 4 years or more and I've never emptied the bin,
except just now. And I know there are far more things in it because I
watched the names of files during last night's virus scan. For an hour
or two they started with something like $recyclebin.

So where are they and how do I delete them?


------------
Last month I did a virus scan and it took a long time. I noticed that
over an hour was spent checking files in the recycle bin, and I
regretted not emptying it before the scan.

I tried to empty all but the last 3 days deletions and found only a few
items.

Last night I scanned again and I forgot about my plan to empty the bin.

Again, 1 or 2 hours scanning files that will never be used.


In all these years I've just restored from the bin either never or once,
and the once was right away.

If you use 'Ccleaner' then it may be set to empty the Recycle Bin.

micky wrote:
How do you empty the recycle bin. I just now followed the MS
instructions, right clicked on the desktop icon, and clicked on Empty
Recyle Bin, and it asked, Do you want to delete 28 items? Yes, but what
about the hundreds or thousands of other files?

Or were they all joined together into 28 files?


I've had this HDD for 4 years or more and I've never emptied the bin,
except just now. And I know there are far more things in it because I
watched the names of files during last night's virus scan. For an hour
or two they started with something like $recyclebin.

So where are they and how do I delete them?


------------
Last month I did a virus scan and it took a long time. I noticed that
over an hour was spent checking files in the recycle bin, and I
regretted not emptying it before the scan.

I tried to empty all but the last 3 days deletions and found only a few
items.

Last night I scanned again and I forgot about my plan to empty the bin.

Again, 1 or 2 hours scanning files that will never be used.


In all these years I've just restored from the bin either never or once,
and the once was right away.

If you do Properties on the Trash, there should be a tick
box for "Immediate Delete", and then items dropped on
the Trash, it does "del item.name" and it's gone in a flash.

But you don't want to be using that setting, if your mouse
has a bad button, and there is any chance of dropping an
item on the Trash by accident.

And if you make a file list with a "decent" tool, you should
be able to spot content sitting in a Trash bin. You might
see "well known security identifiers", a component of the pathname
begins with an "S-" and a string of numbers, and that's a way
of managing the Trash at a user account level.

Going to command prompt and doing a "del item.name" could be
used if nothing else is working. If there is a permissions
problem, perhaps an "unlocker" type command line program
could be used instead of MSDOS "del".

cd your_junk_folder

everything.exe -create-filelist output.txt "C:"

nfi.exe C: output.txt # A Microsoft utility from ~year 2000.

Those are ways of collecting information about files.
Those are unlikely to show you what is in System Volume Information,
but then again, there are some items in there you must not delete,
so greater care is required when working in there.

There always seem to be ways of ending up with "orphan" files
which are outside the reach of "Empty trash", and if you do
notice a lengthy delay doing something, it bears investigation.

Paul

On 09/01/2020 17:08, micky wrote:
How do you empty the recycle bin.

We normally get a bin cleaner who comes once a week to clean the
rubbish. where exactly are you residing? Your should complain to
your local Council if they don't have weekly collections.

Please continue asking stupid questions here as that is the only way you
can confirm to us our already belief about the state of your mind.






--
With over 1.2 billion devices now running Windows 10, customer
satisfaction is higher than any previous version of windows.

On Thu, 09 Jan 2020 12:08:48 -0500, micky
wrote:

How do you empty the recycle bin. I just now followed the MS
instructions, right clicked on the desktop icon, and clicked on Empty
Recyle Bin, and it asked, Do you want to delete 28 items? Yes, but what
about the hundreds or thousands of other files?

Or were they all joined together into 28 files?

Sounds like you forgot to view the contents of the Recycle Bin before
deciding to empty it.

I've had this HDD for 4 years or more and I've never emptied the bin,
except just now. And I know there are far more things in it because I
watched the names of files during last night's virus scan. For an hour
or two they started with something like $recyclebin.

So where are they and how do I delete them?

Recycle Bins can get corrupted. I've seen it numerous times on my own PCs,
where I first noticed it on XP, then 7, 8/8.1, and now 10. The kind of
corruption I'm referring to is completely transparent. No clues are issued
by Windows Explorer (File Explorer in Win 10). The Recycle Bin continues to
work as expected, except that a set of files in the Bin are not cleared out
when the Bin is emptied. I once had about 26GB of orphaned files stuck in
the Recycle Bin, but it's usually much less than that.

In my case, I use Treesize Free, but lots of tools might also work.
https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free

Treesize Free allows me to see those orphaned files, and to optionally
delete one or more of them, or all of them.

On Thu, 09 Jan 2020 23:26:11 -0600, Char Jackson wrote:

On Thu, 09 Jan 2020 12:08:48 -0500, micky
wrote:

How do you empty the recycle bin. I just now followed the MS
instructions, right clicked on the desktop icon, and clicked on Empty
Recyle Bin, and it asked, Do you want to delete 28 items? Yes, but what
about the hundreds or thousands of other files?

Or were they all joined together into 28 files?

Sounds like you forgot to view the contents of the Recycle Bin before
deciding to empty it.

I've had this HDD for 4 years or more and I've never emptied the bin,
except just now. And I know there are far more things in it because I
watched the names of files during last night's virus scan. For an hour
or two they started with something like $recyclebin.

So where are they and how do I delete them?

Recycle Bins can get corrupted. I've seen it numerous times on my own PCs,
where I first noticed it on XP, then 7, 8/8.1, and now 10. The kind of
corruption I'm referring to is completely transparent. No clues are issued
by Windows Explorer (File Explorer in Win 10). The Recycle Bin continues to
work as expected, except that a set of files in the Bin are not cleared out
when the Bin is emptied. I once had about 26GB of orphaned files stuck in
the Recycle Bin, but it's usually much less than that.

In my case, I use Treesize Free, but lots of tools might also work.
https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free

Treesize Free allows me to see those orphaned files, and to optionally
delete one or more of them, or all of them.

Since I was writing about stuff orphaned in the Recycle Bin, I figured I'd
take a look at the two PCs in front of me. Both had a few dozen items
stranded there so I manually deleted those items with Treesize Free.

Oh, I misspoke earlier. I've seen about 1.2TB of files stranded in my D:
Recycle Bin one time. That's a significant amount of disk space effectively
wasted.

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Thu, 9 Jan 2020 15:29:43 -0500, Big Al
wrote:

On 1/9/20 12:08 PM, micky wrote:
How do you empty the recycle bin. I just now followed the MS
instructions, right clicked on the desktop icon, and clicked on Empty
Recyle Bin, and it asked, Do you want to delete 28 items? Yes, but what
about the hundreds or thousands of other files?

Or were they all joined together into 28 files?


I've had this HDD for 4 years or more and I've never emptied the bin,
except just now. And I know there are far more things in it because I
watched the names of files during last night's virus scan. For an hour
or two they started with something like $recyclebin.

So where are they and how do I delete them?


------------
Last month I did a virus scan and it took a long time. I noticed that
over an hour was spent checking files in the recycle bin, and I
regretted not emptying it before the scan.

I tried to empty all but the last 3 days deletions and found only a few
items.

Last night I scanned again and I forgot about my plan to empty the bin.

Again, 1 or 2 hours scanning files that will never be used.


In all these years I've just restored from the bin either never or once,
and the once was right away.

It's my experience that if you connect an external drive of any type and
delete something it goes into that recycle bin as well as the one on the
external drive.

This would account for it, but let me check.

If you disconnect the external, then you can't get those files out of
the recycle bin since the drive isn't there.

I do have an external drive that is used for backup, that is Off most of
the time. I turned it on, and again tried to Empty Recyle Bin, but it
was still greyed out. I used a file manager to look at F's recycle bin
and it had 147 items. So did C's bin, even though I had emptied it
yesterday.

They were the same 147 items and that makes sense because they got into
C when I deleted them. Then I used XXCopy to copy most of my data
files, C:/download, etc. to the F: drive and using the /clone option
when it finds a file in F that's not still in C: it deletes it, and I
think sends it to the recycle bin. So they have the same contents.

I went back to the Desktop recycle bin icon and tried Empty again and it
was no longer greyed out even thouugh it still was a few minutes after I
turned on the gizmo that holds the bare F drive. So I Emptied. It
made me give it Admin privelege for one directory and then it said it
was deleting 147 or 146 files, and after that, nothing was in the F
Recycle bin. And I see the C bin is empty too. I had a file manager
looking at it and even though it usually reflects changes, and even
though another instance of the same file manageer, xplorer2, showed that
F was empty, this time, it showed all the files still in C: Recycle,
until I looked at another C: directory and went back to look at Recycle.

Or at least that's my take on it. I've had to reconnect all my drives
and clean the recycle bin over and over until I got the right drive in.

I only have one external drive and it looks like reconnecting it enabled
me to see Recycle Bin files on my C: drive. Why would that have helped?
OTOH I could have done other things before I reconnected it to see if
they showed up, and the next time I will. But why were they there at all
since I'd emptied the C bin yesterday. These were not new files. All
were dated a month to 18 months ago. (I guess that means I did empty the
bin 18 months ago.)

So far it does seem that reconnecting was necessary, but why is that
basically a secret from users?

Of the 147 files several were directories. The directories were mostly
empty, but maybe not all.


Al

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Fri, 10 Jan 2020 11:09:17 +1300, Ralph Fox
wrote:

On Thu, 09 Jan 2020 12:08:48 -0500, micky wrote:

How do you empty the recycle bin. I just now followed the MS
instructions, right clicked on the desktop icon, and clicked on Empty
Recyle Bin, and it asked, Do you want to delete 28 items? Yes, but what
about the hundreds or thousands of other files?

Or were they all joined together into 28 files?


I've had this HDD for 4 years or more and I've never emptied the bin,
except just now. And I know there are far more things in it because I
watched the names of files during last night's virus scan. For an hour
or two they started with something like $recyclebin.

So where are they and how do I delete them?


Here are two possibilities...

1. If you delete a folder containing (say) 100 files, that counts
as one "item" in the Recycle Bin. But your AV still counts it
as 100 "files".

To delete the 100 *files*, just delete the one *item* in the
Recycle Bin. You don't need to do anything special for this
case.

Open the Recycle Bin. You can see the folder you deleted, but
you cannot see the files inside it. They are all one "item" as
far as the Recycle Bin is concerned.

If you can't see an individual file, how can you restore it if you need
it back?


2. If your computer has more than one Windows user account, then

Good to know, but I only have one, at least only one I've used, so there
wouldn't be much in the othe bin . I only found one bin.


Instead of using the icon's Empty Recycle Bin, can I just use a file
manager, open the bin, ctrl-A, and delete everything?

Especially when Empty Recycle Bin is greyed out.




each user has their own separate Recycle Bin. You can only see
and empty items in your own Recycle Bin. But your AV may be
scanning the Recycle Bins of other users as well.

To delete items from other users' Recycle Bins, log on as the
other user to empty their Recycle Bin for them.

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Thu, 9 Jan 2020 23:15:33 +0000, Patrick
wrote:

On 09/01/2020 17:08, micky wrote:
How do you empty the recycle bin. I just now followed the MS
instructions, right clicked on the desktop icon, and clicked on Empty
Recyle Bin, and it asked, Do you want to delete 28 items? Yes, but what
about the hundreds or thousands of other files?

Or were they all joined together into 28 files?


I've had this HDD for 4 years or more and I've never emptied the bin,
except just now. And I know there are far more things in it because I
watched the names of files during last night's virus scan. For an hour
or two they started with something like $recyclebin.

So where are they and how do I delete them?


------------
Last month I did a virus scan and it took a long time. I noticed that
over an hour was spent checking files in the recycle bin, and I
regretted not emptying it before the scan.

I tried to empty all but the last 3 days deletions and found only a few
items.

Last night I scanned again and I forgot about my plan to empty the bin.

Again, 1 or 2 hours scanning files that will never be used.


In all these years I've just restored from the bin either never or once,
and the once was right away.

If you use 'Ccleaner' then it may be set to empty the Recycle Bin.

Thanks, and thanks all.

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Thu, 09 Jan 2020 23:26:11 -0600, Char
Jackson wrote:

On Thu, 09 Jan 2020 12:08:48 -0500, micky
wrote:

How do you empty the recycle bin. I just now followed the MS
instructions, right clicked on the desktop icon, and clicked on Empty
Recyle Bin, and it asked, Do you want to delete 28 items? Yes, but what
about the hundreds or thousands of other files?

Or were they all joined together into 28 files?

Sounds like you forgot to view the contents of the Recycle Bin before
deciding to empty it.

Pretty much that is true, but I did look months ago after the last virus
scan, and I couldn't find a long list of files like I though there
shoudl be.

I've had this HDD for 4 years or more and I've never emptied the bin,
except just now. And I know there are far more things in it because I
watched the names of files during last night's virus scan. For an hour
or two they started with something like $recyclebin.

So where are they and how do I delete them?

Recycle Bins can get corrupted. I've seen it numerous times on my own PCs,
where I first noticed it on XP, then 7, 8/8.1, and now 10. The kind of
corruption I'm referring to is completely transparent. No clues are issued
by Windows Explorer (File Explorer in Win 10). The Recycle Bin continues to
work as expected, except that a set of files in the Bin are not cleared out
when the Bin is emptied. I once had about 26GB of orphaned files stuck in

Wow.

And you say 1.2TB in another drive. That about equals all my available
storage. Double Wow.

the Recycle Bin, but it's usually much less than that.

In my case, I use Treesize Free, but lots of tools might also work.
https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free

Treesize Free allows me to see those orphaned files, and to optionally
delete one or more of them, or all of them.

I got it, and, bear in mind I just emptied the Recycle Bin 3 hours ago,
it says I have 43,000 files totally 11MB, which averages 250 bytes a
file!!

A lot of cat, mui, mum, sys, nls, dll, lex, inf, ini, png, ocx, fon,
winmd, xbf, at least 10 others, plus no extension, and finally a few
..exe. None over 500 bytes. No txt or pdf files (although I didn't
look at all 43,000 files.) Why no txt (well, one found) or pdf? Why
all short?

Yet right clicking the desktop icon still has Empty greyed out!



If I delete them using Treesize, will that somehow foul up the Recycle
directory?

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Fri, 10 Jan 2020 10:43:42 -0500, micky
wrote:


In my case, I use Treesize Free, but lots of tools might also work.
https://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free

Treesize Free allows me to see those orphaned files, and to optionally
delete one or more of them, or all of them.

I got it, and, bear in mind I just emptied the Recycle Bin 3 hours ago,
it says I have 43,000 files totally 11MB, which averages 250 bytes a
file!!

A lot of cat, mui, mum, sys, nls, dll, lex, inf, ini, png, ocx, fon,
winmd, xbf, at least 10 others, plus no extension, and finally a few
.exe. None over 500 bytes. No txt or pdf files (although I didn't
look at all 43,000 files.) Why no txt (well, one found) or pdf? Why
all short?

Yet right clicking the desktop icon still has Empty greyed out!



If I delete them using Treesize, will that somehow foul up the Recycle
directory?

The preceding was all about the C: drive. Except for 2 empty
subdirectories, the F: drive RBin is empty, thank goodness.

I have some other partitions but none that get things deleted from much.
I'll check them later.

On Fri, 10 Jan 2020 06:54:52 -0500, micky wrote:

In alt.comp.os.windows-10, on Fri, 10 Jan 2020 11:09:17 +1300, Ralph Fox
wrote:

On Thu, 09 Jan 2020 12:08:48 -0500, micky wrote:

How do you empty the recycle bin. I just now followed the MS
instructions, right clicked on the desktop icon, and clicked on Empty
Recyle Bin, and it asked, Do you want to delete 28 items? Yes, but what
about the hundreds or thousands of other files?

Or were they all joined together into 28 files?


I've had this HDD for 4 years or more and I've never emptied the bin,
except just now. And I know there are far more things in it because I
watched the names of files during last night's virus scan. For an hour
or two they started with something like $recyclebin.

So where are they and how do I delete them?


Here are two possibilities...

1. If you delete a folder containing (say) 100 files, that counts
as one "item" in the Recycle Bin. But your AV still counts it
as 100 "files".

To delete the 100 *files*, just delete the one *item* in the
Recycle Bin. You don't need to do anything special for this
case.

Open the Recycle Bin. You can see the folder you deleted, but
you cannot see the files inside it. They are all one "item" as
far as the Recycle Bin is concerned.

If you can't see an individual file, how can you restore it if you need
it back?

If you delete a folder which contains 100 files, you would have to restore
the whole folder. You cannot restore a single file from the deleted
folder.

You can test this for yourself.


2. If your computer has more than one Windows user account, then

Good to know, but I only have one, at least only one I've used, so there
wouldn't be much in the othe bin . I only found one bin.

The bins are hidden sub-folders of "\$Recycle.Bin" (on each drive).
Open a Command Prompt window and run the following command:

dir /A/Q C:\$Recycle.Bin

If you see more than one sub-folder, then you cannot have looked in
the right places when you wrote "I only found one bin".

Your Recycle Bin is the sub-folder with your name in the owner column.
Other users' Recycle Bins may have "..." in the owner column. File
and folder permissions may not let you see even this information.


Instead of using the icon's Empty Recycle Bin, can I just use a file
manager, open the bin, ctrl-A, and delete everything?

All you would see, select, and delete would be the contents of your
own Recycle Bin. File and folder permissions prevent you seeing,
selecting, or deleting the contents of other users' Recycle Bins.


Especially when Empty Recycle Bin is greyed out.

That just means your own Recycle Bin has nothing to delete.
It says nothing about other users' Recycle Bins.


each user has their own separate Recycle Bin. You can only see
and empty items in your own Recycle Bin. But your AV may be
scanning the Recycle Bins of other users as well.

To delete items from other users' Recycle Bins, log on as the
other user to empty their Recycle Bin for them.


--
Kind regards
Ralph