Empty recycle bin with Powershell V2

Question

Is there a way to empty the recycle bin using Powershell 2.0.

I do not want to update Powershell.

is there a requirement not to update PowerShell ? Any specific reason ? — HariHaran, Sep 04 '18 at 09:46
The Recycle Bin is just a folder on the file system. The answer is YES. — jww, Sep 04 '18 at 09:52
@jww reason ? There's a cmdlet called `Clear-RecycleBin` why don't you update and make use of it — HariHaran, Sep 04 '18 at 09:55
@jww: Actually it's a folder per volume and the Shell folder is an aggregate of all of them. — Joey, Sep 04 '18 at 10:17

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 04 '18 at 10:08

2

You could clear recycle bin via com object. Like so:

$Shell= New-Object -ComObject Shell.Application 
$Bin = $Shell.NameSpace(10)
foreach ($Item in @($Bin.Items())){Remove-item $Item.Path -Force}

answered Sep 04 '18 at 10:08

Kirill Pashkov

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`$bin.Items() | % Path | Remove-Item -Force` would be a pipeline option. – Joey Sep 04 '18 at 10:16

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 04 '18 at 12:43

You could also directly call SHEmptyRecycleBin Win32 function:

$definition = @'
[DllImport("Shell32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)]
public static extern uint SHEmptyRecycleBin(IntPtr hwnd, string pszRootPath, uint dwFlags);
'@
$winApi = Add-Type -MemberDefinition $definition -Name WinAPI -Namespace Extern -PassThru
$winApi::SHEmptyRecycleBin(0, $null, 7)

All recycle bins are deleted, no confirmation message is shown, no progress bar, no sound.

Empty recycle bin with Powershell V2

2 Answers2