Recycle bin does not empty windows 7

However, a few days ago, I was deleting several hundred GB of old project files, when I noticed that the Recycle Bin was not indicating that I deleted any files. I thought that above command actually wiped out the old Recycle Bin, letting the system rebuild a new one, so I'm surprised that this problem still exists.

System File Checker is a utility in Windows that allows users to scan for corruptions in Windows system files and restore corrupted files. It will scan your system files and to repair missing or corrupted system files in Windows. To run the SFC scan, refer to the Microsoft article below. Was this reply helpful? I highly recommend Google Drive , but you can go for any. Though not always necessary, performing a clean boot may help resolve some errors like the grayed out empty Recycle Bin option.

Select each Startup item in the list and disable by right-clicking. Reboot your computer and see if the problem is resolved. If yes, then you know one of the associated software or app is the culprit. Narrowing it down will take some time, but it is easy. Re-enable the items one at a time under the Startup tab in Task Manager and reboot your computer to check if issue reappears. I know, time-consuming and boring as hell. Here is a neat trick. When you test half of them at a time, you eliminate the other half.

Repeat the process with the remaining half and again choose half of them to remove the rest. So if you have 16 processes running, you will go from 16 to 8 and then followed by 8 to 4 and so on. Eventually, you'll narrow it down to the one that is causing this issue. Microsoft suggests that you should reset your Recycle Bin in order to get it working the way it should.

Doing that is easy enough. Type the below command and hit Enter. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding. Joined Jul 20, Messages 43 Reaction score 0. I cannot figure out what is wrong!!! I cannot get the recycle bin to empty!!! Joined Jul 20, Messages 1, Reaction score Seems like your recycle bin is corrupted.

The original Microsoft remedy for this is: 1. Open a Command Prompt window. Run as Administrator 2. Then scroll down the page to the bottom and click Desktop icon settings under Related Settings. Resetting is a common way to make programs work normal again, which also can be applied to Recycle Bin. When the way 1 above doesn't help, you can try this method. OneDrive can also cause the issue cannot empty Recycle Bin in Windows If it is installed in your PC, you can stop it to see whether the problem is fixed.