You are creating the invisible file in what appears to be an empty Recycle Bin, and getting the “Are you sure you want to delete ‘windows’? message with the Info2 file still in there. Which obviously is different to the scenario created by Raymond at the above link.
And it doesn't appear to be a corrupt Info2 file stuck in there as it's contents change as the Recycle Bin is being used.
This is definitely one for the devs, and as they do read these threads maybe they'll respond to this one as it's particularly unusual.
Some good detective work done there, which will hopefully help with an eventual resolution.
I knew that converting FAT32 into NTFS was less efficient than starting with a clean NTFS,
but I had not realised one was also permanently stuck with both flavours of Recycled or Recycler.
Gotchas to the left of me, Gotchas to the right
Boy, all this is too much for me. By the way Alan, it's "Clowns to the left of me! Jokers to my right. Here I am stuck in the middle with you." -Bob Dylan O.K., I know when to leave. LOL Warlock
@Alan_B - Nope. Just two single partition NTFS drives as C: and F: And I don't know why it would matter, but one is on the primary controller and the other is on the secondary with DVD drives (as D: and E:) also split between controllers. As to the apparent duplication where a deleted file shows up in the recycler on both drives, Windows Explorer 'helps' us by faking that. But... DOS shows there's a DC4 only in the recycler on the drive the file was erased from. The recycler on the other drive only contains Info2, and the Info2 in the recycler of the second drive is 'empty; (as shown above). I suppose I should point out that if I erase a folder on the second drive, the DC4 and updated Info2 exists in that drive's recycler and the one on the C: drive is empty - even though Windows Explorer fakes it and makes it look like there's a file in both recycler folders.
Just an update to notify that the symptoms described did not change when running 3.13.1600. In my dual disk environment, as long as there is at least one folder in the recycle bin (which is a visual combination of the two recycler folders) , CCleaner will not empty the Recycle Bin correctly.
If there's only one folder in either recycler folder, after runnng CCleaner a manual 'Empty' of the recycle bin will ask if you really want to delete "Windows". If there was more than one folder, a manual 'Empty' will simply ask if you want to delete "all the items in the recycle bin". In either case, the Recycle Bin icon on the desktop will continue to show that the Recycle Bin is not empty after running CCleaner until you manually empty it using the Recycle Bin icon. Luckily, a manual empty does NOT delete 'Windows', and simply resets both recycler folders to their default 'empty' configuration.
Thanks. I'm sure that someone will get around to this item on their 'to-do' list one of these days, but from the looks of the reported bugs in the latest release, I suspect it's not very high on the list since we proved that using the Empty link from the Recycle Bin resolves the error created by CCleaner - as long as you're brave enough to agree to permanently delete "Windows". And you won't see that if there's anything other than a single folder in the recycle bin. Gotta wonder why someone changed CCleaner to not delete directory entires in the Recycler folder while correctly resetting Info2 to it's empty state. Should be an easy problem to resolve - unless I'm missing some obscure reason it was deliberately done that way...
Which reminds me, as I was scanning through the chain, that there's one other 'bug' described in the previous entries which I probably should enter as it's own report. CCleaner (including the lastest version and the previous three or four previous versions) does not delete any folders in %temp%. It scraps any files - including any files in those folders - but leaves any folders - including sub-folders. Blanket fix for a problem back there somewhere because some app expected to find a folder in %temp%?
Thanks for the thought, but the only boxes checked here are the "Show Prompt..." and "Save all settings". I only mentioned it here since it would appear that CCleaner - at least in my environment - seems to have issues with folders. I thought about adding %temp% (or the actual full path) with the include option, but since it's already deleting everything there (except one file - hfperfdata_username - which is always in use, and the folders) I just clean it out manually every now and then. All those folders do however create the original problem in the recycle bin although it simply asks if I want to permanently delete 57 items when I use the manual empty link and still shows nothing there when I view the recycle bin via the Open link or via Windows Explorer.
FYI, although the release notes for 3.14.1616 say that there were improvements made to recycle bin cleaning, this problem still exists in the 3.14 release. Info2 is still reset to the default 'empty' state and the Dc1 directory has still not been deleted.
Six releases since you first described the problem. I know the devs don't typically comment in these topics, but I wish in this case they would make an exception.
Me too. I fully understand that the devs have new features to design and test, that there are other bugs which are much higher priority since this one has a simple and easy 'getaround', and that it appears to be isolated to whatever is unique to my environment since others haven't been able to duplicate it, but... since it still works as it should in a previous release, whatever changed should be fairly easy to track down. And I think I've described exactly what it's doing (or not doing).
And by the way, it's still failing in 317.1688. So is what I've come to believe is the root problem involving deleting any folder - which I just described in another problem entry last week. Perhaps if that one appears to be more global, it will be addressed and the fix will take care of this symptom as well.
Well... that's interesting. 317 portable works as expected - emptying the recycle bin containing a folder and deleting all the folders in %temp%, even though I'd just installed 317.1688 which still fails. The portable version may be ignoring something left over (and compatable with the old version) when I've been deleting the newest failing version, dropping back to the old version until a new version is announced, and then download and install the new version - which upgrades the old version. I'll do some digging and see if I can find any remnants left over after an uninstall.
FYI, the original problem still exists in 317.1689. I did stumble on to one additional and interesting piece of data though. With several small files and one directory in the recycle bin, an analyze shows what I expect with some small number of bytes in the recycle bin, cleaning appears to work (although the recycle bin icon does not change), But... if I try to empty the recycle bin manually at that point (CCleaner still open) it asks if I want to delete "Windows" but this time it fails when I say yes - telling me that DC4 (the recycle bin file name for the directory) is in use by another program. Exiting CCleaner resolves that problem and the manual empty completes normally. Soooo.... CCleaner deletes any files, resets Info2 to it's default empty state, fails to delete the directory entry, but leaves it hooked until the program exits.
I know the devs have not been able to duplicate the problem, but reviewing what changed in the release where it started failing, the details of exactly what's happening, and the fact that the portable version works should help pinpoint why it's failing.