Slow Recycle Bin Emptying?

[StevenB]

OK, I seem to have a spate of questions lately that need answering here, but everyone continues to be helpful, so I'll continue to ask.

I have a new Dell Latitude D610, running XP Pro. It has up-to-date virus software, no spyware issues (ran 2 spyware checks recently), a hard drive that doesn't need defragging, and 1 GB of memory. 23 GB of free disk space. I've also run a registry cleaning tool.

Overall, the system seems to perform well. However, for some reason, emptying the recycle bin take an inordinate amount of time. Case in point: tonight I had 4 files in my Recycle Bin, three small text files and an Excel spreadsheet. I emptied the Recycle Bin, and it took - no lie - 2 minutes. It behaves this way any time I try to empty the bin.

Any ideas why?

 

[electronicsfreak]

You mentioned defrag, but you never mentioned chkdsk? chkdsk should be ran before degrag and I reccomend once a month.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/chkdsk.mspx

If you have ran chkdsk let us know.

 

[linney]

I suppose the first thing to check is how it behaves in Safe Mode, next try another user profile in Normal Mode.

What anti virus software are you running, not something like Norton/Symantec with some sort of Norton Protected Recycle Bin procedure? Or some other recovery type software?

Somethings you can also look at.

At the command prompt, type the following lines, pressing ENTER after each line:
(Assuming it is C: drive)

attrib -r -s -h c:\recycler
del c:\recycler

It will be recreated when you restart

How the Recycle Bin Stores Files (Q136517)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q136/5/17.asp

Cannot Empty Recycle Bin or Modify Recycle Bin Properties

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q173416

Cannot Delete Any Files in Windows

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q246/7/26.asp