Customising Windows' Recycle Bin

Right-click the Recycle Bin icon and select Properties to customise a number of the Recycle Bin's features.

Delete disasters happen. PC users make mistakes and they change their minds. Fortunately, Windows provides a first-tier safety net for files or folders deleted from Computer (or My Computer) or Windows-compliant applications in the form of the Recycle Bin. From there you can either restore an item or permanently delete it, and drag files or folders to or from it just as with any other folder.

Windows Vista has a trap on the context menu for the Recycle Bin icon. There’s a Delete option, which actually removes the Recycle Bin icon from your desktop. To restore the Recycle Bin icon to your desktop:

1. Right-click the desktop and select Personalize —> ‘Change desktop icons’ (in the task pane at the left).
2. Tick ‘Recycle Bin’ and click OK.

Sometimes after this procedure the Recycle Bin icon doesn’t display properly when it’s full or empty. To correct this:

1. Right-click the desktop and select Personalize —> ‘Change desktop icons’.
2. Select the ‘Recycle Bin (full)’ icon and click the ‘Restore Default’ button.
3. Repeat step 2 for the ‘Recycle Bin (empty)’ icon.
4. Click OK.

Similarly, you can restore the proper full/empty icons in XP.

1. Right-click the desktop and select Properties.
2. On the Desktop tab, click the ‘Customize Desktop’ button.
3. On the General tab, select the ‘Recycle Bin (full)’ icon and then click the ‘Restore Default’ button.
4. Repeat step 3 for the ‘Recycle Bin (empty)’ icon.
5. Click OK twice.

You can configure three of the Recycle Bin’s features, on Windows 7, XP or Vista, by right-clicking the icon on your desktop and selecting Properties.

• To eliminate the ‘Are you sure?’ prompt when you delete a file, untick ‘Display delete confirmation dialog’. This setting will apply to all drives on your PC.
• The default size of the Recycle Bin for each drive is 10% of the size of the drive for Windows XP and somewhat less for Vista. You can reduce the size to gain free space on your hard drive or increase it to preserve more deleted files. Note that when the Recycle Bin is full, as you ‘delete’ more items, Windows will start permanently deleting the contents, starting with the oldest items.
• If you frequently bypass the Recycle Bin by pressing and holding the Shift key when you delete a file or folder, you may want to choose ‘Do not move files to Recycle Bin. Remove files immediately when deleted’. You won’t have to press the Shift key, but you also won’t have any way to temporarily enable the Recycle Bin safety net.

The Properties dialog for Windows XP has a Global tab and an additional tab for each hard drive. You can either use the Global tab to make the Recycle Bin settings for all drives the same or tailor the size and bypassing for each drive individually. On Vista and Windows 7, you just click on each drive to customise each one's Recycle Bin.