Here is the fix. Recycle bin in ccleaner says 24 gig…stuck there for 5 months, won’t clean up, although windows 11 recycle bin says all clean. I ran command prompt in administrator mode and typed (copied) in rd /s /q C:\$Recycle.Bin then hit enter and ran ccleaner again and recycle bin in ccleaner finally cleared. That 24 gig was added to my free space on my hard drive storage. Once you delete your recycle bin Windows automatically creates a new one. You do not even have to restart your computer. If your weary about doing this, just create a restore point before doing .
That fix, and why it is sometimes needed, has already been posted many, many, times on this forum.
Here is the explanation of why it happens again:
Many people have a corrupted Bin and never even notice - unless they use CCleaner or similar.
It been happening since Windows XP/Vista and Microsoft have never bothered to fix it.
Although Windows shows the Bin as being empty there is a list of files that were in there stored in the Windows System Files and that list isn’t being reset by Windows when you empty the bin.
So if you don’t fix it that list just keeps growing and growing, saying that you have an ever increasing amount of files in the bin.
To fix a corrupted Recycle Bin:
Open the start menu and begin to type the word ‘Command’, when it shows you the Command Prompt click on “run as administrator”:
Once the command window is open carefully type in the following exacly as it is written including the spaces (or copy/paste it into the command window)
Hit enter.
Job done, you can close the command window.
That removes the corrupted bin and Windows replaces it with a new one.