Recylce Bin always full

[GoatyGoat]

Whenever I click "empty recycle bin" it asks if I am sure that i want to delete "Windows". Hmmm....If I say yes, i hear tge 'crunching' sound of the recycling bin emptying - but nothing happens.

Is there some sort of virus that does this or spyware perhaps.

I ran AdAware and deleted all spyware but it hasnt gone away.
I don't want to run AVG unless necessary cos it takes so bloody long.

Any ideas? Anyone heard of this before?

 

[linney]

I have had this message come up and being a reckless soul I said "yes" and nothing untoward happened. The recycle bin had no further problems and windows carried on quiet happily.

There is probably a hidden zero byte file called windows in the recycle bin or something similar or just a corrupt file there. In fact there are several folders called "Windows" on your machine (have a look through the username folders).

It is a safe bet that Windows would not delete itself from within the operating system. It would however happily delete another operating systems Windows folder in a dual boot situation.

http://www.google.com/search?source...-8&q="are+you+sure+you+want+to+delete+WINDOWS

http://groups.google.com/groups?sou...-8&q="are+you+sure+you+want+to+delete+WINDOWS

 

[gpalmer711]

If you open the recycle bin, are there any files in it after your have emptied it? If so what are they?

Greg Palmer

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Any feed back is appreciated.

 

[GoatyGoat]

I did press Yes...nothing happened. Now it says "Are you sure you want to delete these 2 items?"

Yet, there isnothing in the Recycle Bin (and I have ALL files being shown enabled (inc. OS files)).

What is going on?

 

[GoatyGoat]

I cant even run Checkdisk - it says it needs exclusive access to some Windows Files..

Also, when I tried to defragment, it said, while analysing, that a file in the prefetch folder caused an error. So i deleted that file, and then another file caused an error (in some otehr folder). This is not a coincidence.

Is this the work of a virus? This was a clean install 2 months ago....no problems till now.

 

[gpalmer711]

If you are worried about a virus go to

http://housecall.antivirus.com

For you recycle bin problems try opening a command prompt (Start > Run > CMD > Click Ok).

Then type the following

attrib -r -s -h /s c:\recycler\*.*

then

del /s c:\recycler\*.*

This should empty the recycle bin.

If it does not download Hijack This from

http://www.tomcoyote.org/hjt

it will show you what is running when you start your computer. If you need help reading it then take a look at

http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/htlogtutorial.html

or post a start-up log from the config section here.

Also you can safely delete all files in the prefetch folder.

Greg Palmer

----------------------------------------
Any feed back is appreciated.

 

[linney]

You can try running Chkdsk from the Recovery Console.

HOW TO: Install and Use the Recovery Console for Windows XP (Q307654)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q307/6/54.asp

If you want to go down the path of exploring why you can't see "super hidden files" this may interest you.

You may have a corrupted Desktop.ini file that could cause this type of behavior. This explains what I mean.

http://www.astalavista.com/library/os/win95-98/mshidden.txt

Read the article, it gets interesting around the paragraph

"HOW MICROSOFT DOES IT"

Deleting the Recycler folder will probably clean the whole mess up.

How the Recycle Bin Stores Files (Q136517)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q136/5/17.asp

Cannot Empty Recycle Bin or Modify Recycle Bin Properties

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q173416