How do I mpty my Recycle bin?

[Peter]

Hi guys,
I need a bit of expert guidance, I had an old machine running Win98 which I
wanted to upgrade to XP. I made the mistake of just deleting the unwanted
directories on the hard drive and then installing XP pro. All was OK and
there were no problems until I noticed that my spare space on the drive was
a bit small. I ran a virus check and found that there were a lot of files in
the C:\recycle\nprotect directory ? I cannot see this directory but seem to
remember that the old machine had a Norton guardian system on it, and I
think this is part of the protected deletion service. I do not have the
Norton discs so cannot re install it, also I just cannot seem to find any
way to remove there files, I cannot see them in the recycle bit, it looks
empty, I have tried making system files visible, searching in DOS for them
but they are not visible.
Has anyone any ideas how I might delete these files, they are over 1 Gb in
size so are cluttering up the drive quite a bit? Any help would be
gratefully received.
TIA
Peter

 

[purplehaz]

I think you're going to have to install nortons and then turn off its
protected recycle bin or format and install xp clean(that's what I'd do) or
call symantec and see if they can help you(or check there website for an
faq).

 

[Alex Nichol]

I need a bit of expert guidance, I had an old machine running Win98 which I
wanted to upgrade to XP. I made the mistake of just deleting the unwanted
directories on the hard drive and then installing XP pro. All was OK and
there were no problems until I noticed that my spare space on the drive was
a bit small. I ran a virus check and found that there were a lot of files in
the C:\recycle\nprotect directory ? I cannot see this directory but seem to
remember that the old machine had a Norton guardian system on it, and I
think this is part of the protected deletion service. I do not have the
Norton discs so cannot re install it, also I just cannot seem to find any
way to remove there files

They will have been hidden files. What I would do is boot, hitting F8
as BIOS info goes to black, and from the menu take
Safe Mode - Command Prompt only.

In that use

CD \recycle
Make sure first whether it is recycle, or the regular bin's directory
C:\Recycled with a d, and make sure after the command that the prompt
is now C:\Recycle\>

ATTRIB -H -R -S /S /D *.*
DEL /S *.*

That will clear everything from the folder including sub-folders (which
is why you must be certain you are doing it from the right one)

 

[Peter]

Many thanks,
Following Alex's idea I managed to delete everything in the recycled
folder, but I didn't need to go into safe mode I managed to do it from a DOS
prompt. As you said it was hidden but I have managed to remove the hidden
directories and have regained a lot of space on my hard drive.
Many thanks Alex

Peter