Recycle Bin??

[gman314]

About two years ago, when I "hid" all signs of WindowsXP on my arcade, I also hid the recycle bin.  The other night, I deleted about 20GB of files and now I'm thinking "Hmm, I better empty out the recycle bin."  However, I cannot remember (even after a search of the entire hard drive) where the recycle bin is.  I have two created user accounts, and I have also used TweakUI to play around with settings initially.  It's not that much of an issue since my hard drive is 1TB, but it's the principal of the matter.  Any idea where my recycle bin could be??  I still want to keep it hidden, but would like to empty it.   

[DJ_Izumi]

Open explorer, type in 'Recycle Bin' and hit enter.  The Recycle Bin should then open up in explorer.

That is, assuming you just removed the desktop icon and not the feature itself. o.o

[gman314]

Well, I typed in "Recycle Bin" in a search of my C drive, and nothing came up.  This is probably a stupid question, but where exactly could I type "recycle bin" in explorer (I assume you are referring to Windows Explorer)?  If you probably haven't noticed, I had some degree of help in the hiding windows part of my initial setup.  Thanks. 

[gman314]

I must have permanently deleted it because it does not show up anywhere.  On the positive side, I think that I had set windows to permanently delete files, as opposed to moving them to the recycle bin.  However, I could have sworn that I saw a dialog box telling me that it was moving files into the recycle bin after I had deleted them.   

[Smeghead]

Right-click an empty area of your desktop
Select Properties
Click the Desktop tab
Click the Customize button
Click Restore Default
Exit all windows and restart your computer

[DJ_Izumi]

Well, I typed in "Recycle Bin" in a search of my C drive, and nothing came up.  This is probably a stupid question, but where exactly could I type "recycle bin" in explorer (I assume you are referring to Windows Explorer)?  If you probably haven't noticed, I had some degree of help in the hiding windows part of my initial setup.  Thanks. 

No, you don't search for it, it's not a real folder.  It's like searching your computer for 'My Computer'.  In the address bar in explorer, where you'd type a web address or a folder location, you can also type 'My Computer' or 'Recycling Bin' and it'll take you to those places.  Just do that.

[Smeghead]

yeah he means

double click on the 'my computer' icon on your desktop
then type in
Recycle Bin
in the address window

If youve deleted all your icons on the desktop do:

Start Button - run - c:

[Gray_Area]

The Recycle Bin has a limit of a few gigabytes. Any file or set of files larger is/are permanently deleted.

[Thaevil1]

Think you would always be able to empty it via disk-cleanup.
If it is not 100% gone that is.

There is a checkbox you can check during the disk cleanup to empty the bin.

[MonMotha]

The Recycle Bin on XP for each file system is in the (hidden, system flagged, etc.) "RECYCLER" directory in the root (i.e. C:\RECYCLER).  Going there may not give you a fancy "empty recycle bin" option, though.  I don't remember.  You'll have to enable the show hidden and disable the "hide system files" options for it to appear.

Even if it's hidden from the desktop, I thought it would still show up in the explorer tree view, though.  I've you've got all the shortcuts for that hidden, just hit Win+E (hold down the "windows logo" key and press 'E').  That should bring it up even on a very stripped down Windows build (it works on a stripped down XP embedded build I played with that didn't even have notepad!).