There are situations where you need to reset the Recycle Bin store folder to fix problems such as Recycle Bin not showing the files that have been deleted, or you’re unable to completely empty the Recycle Bin. Each drive has a hidden and protected folder named $Recycle.bin, which is where the Recycle Bin stores files and folders that you (and other users in the PC) delete. Windows creates a fresh $Recycle.bin folder automatically after you reset it.

Fixing a corrupt Recycle Bin

IMPORTANT:  The following procedure permanently deletes all files and folders which are already in the Recycle Bin (from all user accounts in the system) and cannot be recovered.

1. Open an elevated Command Prompt window. To open an elevated Command Prompt, click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.

2. Type the following command and press ENTER:

rd /s /q C:\$Recycle.bin

(This clears out the $Recycle.bin folder for the C:\ drive. You may have to do this for each hard disk partition in your system.)

3. Type exit to close the Command Prompt window.

Editor’s note: The above method only fixes Recycle Bin folder corruption if any. Using the above method as an attempt to fix any cosmetic problems (eg. Recycle Bin showing incorrect icon) with the Recycle Bin does not help.

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19 Responses to “How to Fix a Corrupted Recycle Bin in Windows 7 and Windows Vista” Subscribe to comments!

  1. Howard H
    said this on Sunday, February 14th 2010 10:00 pm

    Found this fix on other sites but no one mentioned to run as an administrator. Thank you. Worked perfectly.

  2. Sauro
    said this on Sunday, January 31st 2010 6:57 pm

    Hi. All the above solutions didn’t worked for me. I still have an ALWAYS FULL recycle.bon icon and I always have to wait 15 minutes to see the white bat on top becoming green and always without showing anything: more overe the command to empty recycle.bin doesn’t work… can someone help me ? Thanks

  3. Jaime Martinez
    said this on Wednesday, January 27th 2010 12:54 am

    Great Help!! It worked great in C drive but in D drive it was saying that the folder was not empty, when I searched for hidden files there was a recyclebin file in D, I just erased it and started again. Now everything works fine :)

  4. yazan
    said this on Friday, January 15th 2010 8:50 pm

    thanks a lot, worked like a charm :)

  5. Sam
    said this on Thursday, January 7th 2010 7:21 pm

    access denied ? PLease advise

  6. Tom
    said this on Saturday, December 12th 2009 6:42 pm

    I use CC Cleaner to clear my computer out daily, but today it started getting stuck on a file in C:\$recycle.bin.

    I’ve left it nearly an hour and its just stuck on removing a file from that location.

    I tried the above but I get an error – Access is denied! Can anyone help?

  7. martin
    said this on Tuesday, November 24th 2009 3:12 am

    Did not work,recycle bin still not storing deleted items.

  8. pj
    said this on Friday, November 6th 2009 4:57 am

    tnx a lot.. it really helped me…. ^^

  9. ake
    said this on Monday, October 19th 2009 7:04 am

    sobrang thanks!!!

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