Problem Emptying Recycle Bin

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I use Win98 both at home and at work, but this happens with my home pc only.

I send a file (or a group of files) to the Recicle Bin. Then, if I open the RB, I’ll hit Del and delete any element as anyone would -even the entire group.
BUT if instead of doing so I go to my desktop, right click on the RB icon, and choose “Empty Recycle Bin”, although it will indeed empty, Windows will immediately show this message (see original msg in Spanish in attachment below):
“Cannot delete M_SCON~1. Cannot find the specified file. Make sure the path and filename you specified are correct.”

Another symptom is, after I empty the RB this way, the RB icon won’t show it’s been emptied (though it is empty).
I’ve made a search in google with no success, so if anyone knows what might be causing this, I’d appreciate any input.

TIA

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Hi Cowboy, thanks for your response.

I’ll try what you say when I get home. I can see the contents of the Recycle Bin. The icon will display it’s empty if I open the RB, select all its elements, and delete them. The behaviour I described in my 1st post occurs only when right-clicking on the RB, “Empty Recycle Bin”.
BTW… I know very little about DOS… deleting the Recycle Bin won’t hurt my system, right?

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Hi Cowboy,

I tried doing what you said but I couldn’t get the RB deleted – admittedly I’m a fish out of water when facing a DOS interface.

>Restart to a command prompt.
I restarted my pc to DOS. I believe running a command prompt while still inside Windows won’t delete my Recycle Bin, right?

>Type attrib -s -h recycled.
Done. When I hit Enter nothing happens, I get the same line repeated (that is, if the line was C:>, after typing and hitting Enter, I get C:> again). Is this ok? Am I doing something wrong?

>Type del recycled.
Done. I get the message: ‘File not found’

>Restart the computers.
Well, I think this bit I know how to do .

If there’s something else you could point out about this… er… ‘procedure’, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you very much

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Hello Diegol,

To delete the recycled folder from the DOS prompt, the command is
rd recycled
not
del recycled

If you’ve got more than one logical hard drive (eg C D), you’ll need to delete the recycled bin from each one. From memory, RD only works on empty folders, and DEL doesn’t work on hidden files. So, before you can RD the recycled folder on a given drive, you’ll have to make sure there are no files in it, hidden or otherwise. Probably the best way to do this is to copy the following text to a new file in notepad:

echo off
attrib -r -s -h recycled
attrib -r -s -h recycled*.*
del recycled*.*
rd recycled

then save it as C:FIX_R_BIN.BAT

To use this, exit from windows to a DOS session (don’t just start a DOS session from within Windows), then run C:FIX_R_BIN.BAT on each logical hard drive.

When you reboot to Windows, the recycled bin should be recreated.

Cheers

PS: There is another command, DELTREE that deletes files and folders in one go, but I’m not sure if that works on hidden folders.

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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FWIW: Deltree does all:

“Unlike the RMDIR (RD) command, the DELTREE command allows you to delete a directory even if it contains files and subdirectories. All files and subdirectories subordinate to the directory you are deleting will also be deleted regardless of any attributes. This means that even if a file has hidden, system, read-only, or other attributes, it will still be deleted.”

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Hi R2,

So it does! In that case, the batch file can be eliminated. Since DELTREE resides in the WindowsCommand folder, which is part of the default path, Diegol should be able to get away with:
DELTREE RECYCLED
on each logical drive.

Cheers

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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I’m posting back after 20 days… Yeah, finally got it right . I just wanted to make sure what was it I was doing in DOS, so I got a friend to explain to me before doing anything at all. This is how I went about it:

cd recycled
attrib -r -h -s *.*
cd ..
attrib -r -h -s recycled
deltree recycled
d:
cd recycled
attrib *.* -r -h -s
cd ..
attrib recycled -r -h -s
deltree recycled

It didn’t hurt the system, and most importantly: IT WORKED!!!
BTW, I did it in a command prompt, within Windows.

Thank you all very much for your quick responses.

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(Edited by Phil Rabichow on 27-Apr-03 18:28. to add last paragraph)

I assume a typo. The last two attrib lines would have

attrib +s +h etc.

rather than the minus signs, wouldn’t it?

OK, I see I misread the post now, thanks to R2’s reply. You’re deleting it on two different drives. As Roseannadanna would say: “That’s very different. Never mind.”

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I don’t believe so — he is removing the attributes so that he can delete the “recycled” folder.

I am surprised it worked within windows! But, congratulations and thanks for the follow up.

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Hi Rick:
Then I’m confused. Looking at the steps, he has already removed the attributes & deleted the recycle bin. Aren’t the last two attrib lines to change the newly recreated recycle bin to hidden & system?

Never mind! I just reread the post. Now I see that he’s deleting the recycle bin on 2 drives (although I thought that there was only one recycle bin and that it “displayed” on all the drives).

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Hi Phil,

Though there is only once logical recycled bin, its contents physically exist on all logical drives, with each drive’s bin holding the files ‘deleted’ from that drive.

Cheers

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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Hi Phil,

I thought so too. I’m impressed how much one can learn in these forums.

Thanks for all the input

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Macropad, R2, thank you for your replies. I’ll give your suggestions a try.

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