Recycle Bin

[Metrogirl]

Did you know that the Windows recycle bin reserves 10% of your disk space for its own use? That was a sensible enough value when disks were smaller, but with today's huge drives that's just excessive.

 

Here is a registry hack to reduce it to 2%:

 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\BitBucket]
"Percent"=dword:00000002

 

Here is my favourite hack to kill the recycle bin altogether and get rid of it from your desktop. After you run this, you will still be asked if you want to delete files, but once they're gone, they're gone. You have to reboot or restart Explorer for this to take effect:

 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\BitBucket]
"UseGlobalSettings"=dword:00000001
"Percent"=dword:00000004
"NukeOnDelete"=dword:00000001

[-HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}]

 

And if you want to put the recycle bin back exactly as Microsoft intended, run this reg script. Everything is restored to the defaults.

 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}]
@="Recycle Bin"


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\BitBucket]
"UseGlobalSettings"=dword:00000001
"Percent"=dword:0000000a
"NukeOnDelete"=dword:00000000

 

Note that any registry hack carries a risk, so don't use these unless you feel comfortable messing around with your system. To use them, copy and paste into a file of your choosing with a .reg extension, for example "KillRecycleBin.reg" - then double click and say yes to the merge prompt box which pops up. Also note that these scripts work on XP, I haven't tested them with Vista.

[Danyel]

Hi Metrogirl:

 

Thanks for the tips. I'll try on the Windows XP side of the computer.

 

--danyel

[-----------]

Interesting. I didn't realize that.