Here's an interesting situation: I'm running Windows XP Professional with two different user accounts. I went into one of the accounts and was able to delete a folder belonging to the other user (which really shouldn't have happened based on security, but it did). Now, when I try to empty or restore the recycle bin, I get an access denied error. Both users have administrator priveleges. Any thoughts on how to change the security of the folder in the recycle bin? I can't seem locate it from the other user's account - seems that the c:\recycler folder is user specific.

Reset the NTFS access permissions on your C drive. Next, login with an administrative account and take ownership of all the files on drive c and empty the recycle bin. Afterwards, login with the other account and take ownsership of all files specific to this account. (this last step is optional)

Also run a thorough chkdsk on drive c. I recommend running chkdsk from the recovery console. It seems to fix errors better.

Ugh! Thanks for the response. I was hoping that would be my last-ditch effort. I have over a 100K files to be processed...might take me a while!

Update: For some reason, I was able to empty my recycle bin today. Not sure what happened, but I'm not complaining.

Now should I mark the thread as solved ... I think yes.