"Empty Recycle Bin" Is Always Greyed Out

Hello, so I'm having a problem with my Recycle Bin (also known as the Recycle Binnary ).

Every time I want to empty out the Recycle Binnary, I would right click on it, and press "Empty Recycle Bin" (refer to the image). But lately, that option is greyed out. (Before you ask if there anything is in there: yes, there are items in there every time I want to empty it out.) I tried manually to delete everything in there, and had more items go in there, and that option is still greyed out.

I tried many suggestions from online with no solution.

I want someone to reply here who have had the same problem in the past please.

(I am up to date with all possible Windows Updates; my version of Windows is: 1909 Build 18363.778)

Thanks, in advance, for the assistance.

Hello Aiman,

You may have a corrupted Recycle Bin. If so, you can see if using the method in the tutorial below may fix this for you.

Fix Corrupted Recycle Bin in Windows

Thank you for the reply Shawn.

I just tried steps 1 through 5, with no solution. Now I'm trying step 6 (sfc /scannow).
I will restart the computer afterwards to see if that solved the problem.

- - - Updated - - -

"Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them."
Hopefully that is good news!

"The system file repair changes will take effect after the next reboot."
I currently cannot restart the computer for the next two hours or so.

But once I am able to restart the computer, I will post back here the result.

Give me about two hours.

The only time I see the Recycle Bin choice of Empty is if I hold down the Shift key while pressing the Del key or the right mouse button but most always get a prompt about confirming the action but that can be disabled albeit quite dangerous in practice.

I restarted the computer & the problem is still there.

I may have found the bug. Can someone please tell me what the data says for (Default) at this registry key?
(This is the Recycle Bin registry information)

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\DefaultIcon

- - - Updated - - -

Okay, I figured out how to fix it. The value data for Default should be the same as the entry for: empty

Thanks everyone for you input.