JVH Consulting's Blog

Recent issue with client started with pop-ups about Recycle Bin corruption message: Recycle Bin “\\servername\folder redirection\<username>\Documents” is corrupted, would you like to repair – Options Yes or No – neither of which get rid of the issue.

Searched to find solutions and tried these things:

1. delete $Recycle.Bin folder on Drive(s) on PC> rd /q /s $Recycle.Bin. Reboot computer afterwards – Windows rebuilds the folder on drive(s).
2. Change Locations of the redirected folders for the user – right-click on each folder, properties… Then click on Location Tab. Options here – if server still there and functional – change to move to local system: c:\users\<username>\Documents for example. If Server is not available (like server crashed and burned) then click “Restore Default” button. Click on Okay and then it may ask to try and move from old location – Click NO. Documents folder under users account may be empty if changed from out of commission server. This is okay, we’ll get files back in a bit.
3. Tried running System file checker repair: SFC /Scannow – while this almost always finds things to repair, it doesn’t solve recycle bin issue.

After all above options didn’t work, finally came down to the following to make the Recycle Bin message stop and then recover/restore “offline cached redirected files” from the workstation.

1. Opened Control Panel
2. Open Sync Center
3. Click on “Manage Offline Files”
4. New Window opens – Click on topmost button: “Disable Offline Files”; Reboot computer.
5. This method will stop the recycle bin corrupted errors for good.

Now to restore the cached Folder Redirection files for the user(s).

1. Download and extract file to C:\windows folder PSEXEC.exe from this website.
2. open Administrator command prompt on computer.
3. Now we’re going to open another command prompt as the System account:
4. type psexec.exe -i -s cmd.exe (-i > interactive, -s > as system account)
5. This opens another Admin command prompt as the NT Authority\System account.
6. This account has full access to the folder redirected folders under C:\windows\csc.
7. With the System command prompt change directory to:
   • cd “C:\Windows\CSC\v2.0.6\namespace\<servername>\Folder Redirection”
8. Type “dir” and return – will show you list of user names/profiles.
9. type cd <username> ; from here run another dir and it’ll show list of folders (for example: Desktop, Documents, Music, & Videos).
10. Now we’re going to copy all these files to another more accessible location and then later user can decide if they want to keep the files:
    • from <username> in above path type: Xcopy Documents\*.* /s /d /y c:\temp\<username>\Documents\*.*. Repeat for each folder listed under <username>.
    • When all done check to make sure you have all the files.
    • From there type cd.. & return
    • Now to delete the users profile folder: rd /q /s <username> – this will remove the cached folder for the user and any “recycle bin corruption” will disappear because there is no longer a redirected cached folder for the user.

Note: I did use a program called TreeSizeFree.exe to see/determine where large files were located – can also use this to compare folder sizes after performing the copy above.

Good luck and comment with any questions or updates!

Cheers