Recycle Bin corrupt

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

I have recently converted a couple of FAT32 partitions to NTFS. All seemed well, and I defragged before and after the conversion.

Now trying to run Ccleaner, I get message "The Recycle Bin on drive letter:\ is corrupt or invalid. Do you want to empty the Recycle Bin for this drive?".

When I delete anything on that drive it won't go into the Recycle Bin, but is deleted permanently. Obviously, the Recycle Bin is unusable.

Looking at the partition with Explorer I see two things:

• Recycled (with a little Recycle Bin icon), dated 2002-01-24
  
• RECYCLER (with a normal folder icon), dated 2001-08-2
  

Any suggestion how to repair that Recycle Bin? Of course I could reformat, but there is A LOT of data on that partition...

Added (1): I know about http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=297760, but I'm already on XP-SP2.

Added (2): Yes, I have three SUBST drives defined on that partition (as mentioned in above MSKB article).

Added (3): Of course I ran CHKDSK.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Now running the Backup utility -- that should run for a few hours.

Question: after backup of that drive is complete, and I format and restore -- will the corrupted Recycle Bin likely to be restored?

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

It's fixed; here's what I did:

• Ran backup on the whole partition (it was a lot quicker than I expected).
  
• Formatted the partition (NTFS, with default attributes).
  
• Copied a file to the new partition, then deleted it. Still no Recycle Bin!
  
• Restored the backup (without the Recycle Bins).
  
• Ran CHKDSK on reboot.
  
• Upon Windows startup completion, I now have a RECYCLER folder, and deleted files go to the Recycle Bin.
  

Still, the question remains: for someone who doesn't have the resources to backup a large partition, is there a way to restore a corrupted Recycle Bin?

[D4\/!d]

Hello pwillener, isn't life spooky. That is just what is happening to me. And I'm not in a position to do the fancy backup and reformat - far too drastic for me. :(

I think the problem is linked to CCleaner, which is a wonderful program, and I use it regularly. However, it does something to upset the Recycled /RECYCLER bins.

As you say one is FAT32 the other is NTFS. (I dualboot Win98SE and XPPro)

When I get the same message: "The Recycle Bin on drive letter:\ is corrupt or invalid. Do you want to empty the Recycle Bin for this drive?". I just keep clicking Yes until it hears me and carries on working ok. :angry:

I am not too bothered about stuff going into the R Bins, I often use Shift+Delete to bypass them anyway. :blink:

Tricky one this. Anyone brave enough to take it on... ;)

[nellie2]

For WXP you could try this found at Kelly's corner, just look for 'Repair/Replace Recycle bin

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

I think the problem is linked to CCleaner, which is a wonderful program, and I use it regularly. However, it does something to upset the Recycled /RECYCLER bins.

I don't think (not yet) that the corrupt recycle bin is caused by Ccleaner; I rather think that Ccleaner is just the one that discovers it first. Let's see if others also have similar experiences in the past or in the future.

For WXP you could try this found at Kelly's corner, just look for 'Repair/Replace Recycle bin

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm

Thanks for that link, nellie2. I actually found this when I was looking for a solution yesterday, but it didn't offer any proof that it wouldn't make things worse. Do you know this website, and is it a trusted source of information?

[kweaver]

The following XP reg tweak works for me. TIn my case the sys administrator did not experience the corrupt recycle bin but a non admin user experienced the corrupt recycle bin (F:/ in this case.) The Recycle bin Properties for the F: drive TAB would not even show up under the user profile but would under the admin profile. This F:/ drive is partitioned into F:/ and G:/. The F:/ being the active (primary partition). Anyways it worked to correct my problem.

I wonder if there is a requirement to remove this .Reg tweak?

"For WXP you could try this found at Kelly's corner, just look for 'Repair/Replace Recycle bin

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm "