So you used one of the previous tips to remove the Recycle Bin from your desktop, but now you want to empty it. Can’t simply right-click on it to do that now. What to do? Here’s how to do it from the command line.

You’ll need some help, there isn’t a built in command line to do this. There are a few options, you could create your own script to do it, but there is a freeware utility called RecycleNOW that handles it quite nicely. Opening the utility, either by double-clicking it, or calling it from the command line, instantly empties the Recycle Bin without asking to confirm or showing any other pop-up items.

To make this work cleanly, there are a few steps we need to take. First of course is downloading the RecycleNOW program. It’s a zip file, so you’ll need to unzip it, for now unzipping it to your desktop works well. Inside the RecycleNOW folder you extracted is another RecycleNOW folder, and inside it is the RecycleNOW application.

I’d like to be able to type in a command, and have it just work, without having to first go look for my program. One way of doing this is to add the RecycleNOW application to your Windows directory. Vista will search that directory when you type in command lines, making this seem like a built in command. Before we do this though, my last tip pointed out a problem we’ll encounter if UAC is enabled. If we just copy the application to our Windows folder right now, it will prompt us every time we try to open it to see if we trust the publisher. To avoid this, we need to first unblock the application while it’s in a location that Vista will allow us to do so. Right-click on the RecycleNOW application, and choose Properties. Click on the Unblock button on the bottom of the window and click OK.

Now that the program will start up without complaint, you need to decide what you want to call the command that empties your Recycle Bin. I’m going to stick with RecycleNOW (it’s not cap sensitive), but you can call it anything you like, simply by renaming the RecycleNOW application file. To rename the file, right-click the RecycleNOW application file and choose Rename from the menu. Type in the desired name, and hit Enter on your keyboard.

With the file named, all we need to do now is move/copy it to the Windows directory. There are many ways to do this, I’ll use the Copy & Paste method. Right-click the RecycleNOW application file (or whatever you renamed it to) and choose Copy.

Then, navigate to your System folder (generally C:\Windows which is in Computer).

You can now paste the application in the Windows directory by right-clicking in a blank part of the Windows window, and choosing Paste from the menu. If you have UAC enabled, you’ll need to approve the elevated privileges required to copy the program to that location.

Now, any time you want to empty the Recycle Bin, just click on the Start menu, and type recyclenow (or whatever you named your application), and press the Enter key. Trash gone!

ITsVISTA

ITsVISTA Tip 23: Empty Vista’s Recycle Bin from the Command Line

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