My daughter is running win XP professional on a desktop Gateway P4 (about 3 years old) and after successfully cleaning up incredible amounts of spam (Look2Me- horrible!), I found that her recycle bin shows no deleted files. It doesn't even show that they are being deleted, yet they disappear. Of course I have all the usual checked off in both the Recycle Bin Properties and in Win Explorer like 'view hidden files and folders'. It's also set to '10% max size', '1 setting for all drives', and 'show delete confirmation' (which it does not do). Also strange to me is that there is only a Global tab available in her recycle bin properties. I run XP Home on my desktop and laptop, and there are 2 other tabs for both C and D drives. She has no windows login set so there are no administrator rights set which would prohibit me from deleting. I've searched through article after article online and even downloaded a recycle bin fix (restorerecyclebin.reg) from a reputable site. I then attempted to do a manual fix to delete the recycle bin and let Windows replace the bad component (Info2 - whatever this is), which suggested using the command prompt (CMD) and typing in a series of directions, but when I type each line in and press 'enter', it doesn't recognize the direction (I'm not too sharp in the DOS area!).
If anyone can help, I'd really be grateful. Thanks!

well by default she has admin privlidges. i used a laptop that was setup like that and it had admin rights. about the whole recycle been thing. what spyware/adware removal program did you use? did you use ad-aware se or spybot search and destroy? have you also tried running hijack this and then posting the log online for the techs to look at and then they will tell you what to erase? sorry that im not much of help ive never had that happen to me.

- Dave

Yes I used all of those programs + my Norton System Works. I also edited problems in the registry successfully. I have completely purged the computer of spyware and don't think that I need to resort to HijackThis at this point. The problem is now this recycle bin thing which I think has always been the case with her computer (pre-spyware). There is only 1 account set up on the computer and that is for "administrator" so everyone would automatically sign on as administrator since "guest" is disabled. Therefore, there should be no problem sending files to the recycle bin. I even tried running the restorerecyclebin.exe in Safe Mode just now but still no luck. I think there is something wrong with it but don't know how to delete it or reinstall a new one!
Thanks for your interest.

thats really weird that gateway would send you a laptop with a buggy recycling bin....just tells ya that probably some one might have messed up while installing the OS.

- Dave

my recycle has the same properties and whatnot as your gateway. there are a few things that don't wind up there and it's never concerned me, b/c when you actually think about it, "Deleting" isn't really removing it, just code to make it appear it's not there.

Note that the Recycle bin is a GUI/Explorer feature. If you delete files from the CMD prompt or uninstall an application, it does not mean that the files end up in the Recycle bin.

I was only using the command prompt, according to the directions I had read in a couple of help articles, to try to fix the corrupt recycle bin itself, not to delete files. I CAN delete files by sending them to the but cannot view them in the recycle bin or restore them. I don't know if this is tied into the fact that I only have a global tab in the properties folder - I just have no clue, but I'm not trying to delete through CMD.

Ah, ok. I misunderstood you then. So the problem is that if you delete a file it doesn't show up in the Recycle Bin?

Have you already tried to physically delete the C:\RECYCLER folder (select the folder and press <shift><delete> to bypass the Recycle Bin). It will be recreated automatically.

Is it possible that the Norton System Works interferes with the Recycle Bin as it (Norton) contains a kind of Recycle Bin replacement. I'm not that familiar with this product though.

Thank you so much. I can't wait to try that tonight when I get home (I'm at work on my laptop at the moment). That's the type of solution that I was looking for but wasn't sure where the recycle bin folder was kept or what it was called (I'm not sure that it comes right off of the root of C in Windows XP but if I know its folder is called 'RECYCLER', I'll do a search). I'll also check out Norton System Works and see what options I have checked.

Thank you - problem solved. I went through cmd and corrected the issue. Recycle bin now has 'C' available under properties and deleted files are visible. Thanks for all of your help.