Please let me know how to truely empty my recycle bin in MSDOS mode. Thanks- Bob

That's not possible BOBHQ But why in the world would you want to do it that way?

"That's not possible BOBHQ" It is possible. But I wouldn't recommend it.

I want to because when I check out the properties of my recycle bin it says that their are files & folders left in it even though my recycle bin appears to be empty.

May I ask how did you, BOBHQ, check that property of your recycle bin ? before proposing anything to your liking.

You can check the properties 2 ways. One is by right clicking directly on the icon on the desktop, then clicking on properties, however this won't give you all the info. Instead, go to control pannel, ckick on the hard drive in this case "C" then right click on the "recycled" - then properties. This will give an extra tab rather than only "global" & your drives, it will include a tab labled "general". Here you are given the amount of folders & space being used.

Thank you very much for your feedback. I find the problem quite intricate and I thank you for raising it. I am surprised after doing some preliminary elementary testings and things get quite mixed up. A general understanding is that Recycle Bin should be distinguished from Recycled folder(s) on each logical drive. The former is some {name space} managed by COM object displaying its contents by its own API. Whereas for Recycled folders, windows looks for desktop.ini to display its contents. You know all the tricks in rename, delete, copy, cut & past, bypass etc as to Recycle Bin is concerned. They will not help in this particular issue. Enough for a general digression for the moment, in real practical situation, things get pretty mixed up. First thing first, I follow your lead in checking the properties of Recycled folder (not Recycle Bin). I find the size in bytes and the bytes used are contradictory, with bytes used larger than the size. This suggests the invisible INFO contains a history ledger upon which data are drawn rather than the real. Things get mixed up, I believe, due, but not limited far from it, to :- 1. we used to inter-drive copying, 2. multiple OS installed, 3. multiple primary logical drive partition, 4. recoverable/unrecoverable delete, etc. In my case, the icons for Recycled appear some as the garbage can, some as hidden folder in different logical drives. I will leave them there pending further study, if get time. There are many loose-ends pending investigation, but I won't bother to discuss here, maybe later? I don't know. As to your willingness to delete junks from the Recycled folders in Dos mode, you can do it without changing any system or hidden attributes of the Recycled folders. In Dos, dir command will not show Recycled directory of course, by it won't bar you from accessing it, ie eg dir c:\recycled. You may find readings sometimes different from what you get from Windows Explorer. Simply go ahead and delete them to free up space. I would be more cautious to delete Recycled though, even advise against. My present thinking is that we cannot access to Recycle Bin per se in Dos mode, simply because it is quite a different animal. (We can access Recycled folders though.) To access anything nearly equivalent to Recycle Bin in Dos is possible only if we make heavy handed Registry edition. Eliminate the present Recycle Bin and recreate something nearly equivalent to it but as a folder (called it Recycle Bin if one likes) as a temparary starage area for the deleted items. But, I don't see a good reason to do that apart from being a reasonably good exercise. It would be risky though, as one is never quite sure the side-effects. Recycle Bin is not particularly well documented. There are also little programs out there to empty Recycle Bin. Won't recommend any here as the effectiveness is in still to see. Try out Dos access to Recycled said above. See if it solves your worries. Doing too much may be risky as this is not a critical issue for your day-to-day operation. Thank you again for raising your interesting question. I will be less available for the time to come, but will keep a bookmark on this #56116 see if you have more feedback here.