Windows 10: Recycle Bin extreme memory usage resulting in OS freezing & crashing - solved

The previous thread with this title and many others relating to the same issue have been locked by Microsoft without a valid solution https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/recycle-bin-extreme-memory-usage-resulting-in-os/37e7c09b-21bf-40ad-927c-8d8150fd6b52 The solution to this is to not use explorer to empty the recycle bin and use the following PowerShell command lineowerShell Clear-RecycleBin -force -ErrorAction:IgnoreThis empties the recycle bin in seconds and uses minimal memory. Funny that the MS support techs couldn't come up with this solution. If they read this the

:)

 

Recycle Bin extreme memory usage resulting in OS freezing & crashing

I just had my computer freeze and crash twice while trying to clear out the recycle bin. It had probably 20-30k items totaling a few hundred GB or so, and when opening it, it did what explorer often does where the bar at the top showing the loading progress moved extremely slowly as it took at least a few minutes to fully load the contents. And every time I selected a few thousand items to delete (I try to only do a few thousand at a time since Windows is a slow, buggy, poorly optimized POS and even with that amount it can take a few or even several minutes to "discover" the items and then more time to delete them), it would then take a while just to remove those items from the bin and update the file list. I didn't get very far at all the first time when Windows started flipping out: programs went unresponsive, my monitor blanked and all the windows moved to the second screen (projector), then after about half a minute everything moved back, then another minute or so later it happened again, only this time the taskbar moved over, too, then everything went away except the delete confirmation dialog box, which was unresponsive, and four other dialog boxes, also all unresponsive, with the top one saying "Not enough memory resources are available to process this command."

I have 64GB of RAM plus a 2GB page file (it would be more, but Windows is too much of a POS to use multiple ones on different drives, a whole other issue), so not having enough memory is not an error I'm accustomed to seeing. It was only later I discovered why it came up. After it froze, I did a hard reset, did updates (which was a mistake), reboot again, then started reopening everything I had running before and started trying to empty the recycle bin again. This time, I got a BSOD. Rebooted again, this time worked on clearing the bin before opening everything else back up (not because that stuff had anything to do with the crashes, but because I was sick of having to reopen it all over and over again...I f***ing hate MS), and was finally able to successfully finish. Third time's a charm. However, afterwards, I noticed my memory usage was high. Very high. 70- or 80-something percent high. Out of 64GB. I then did something (don't remember what, but nothing major, just closed an explorer window or something) and it started dropping and fell "all the way" down to 47%, where it's held since for the past hour or so. That's still very high, especially considering I don't have much running, and checking Process Explorer, I see explorer.exe using ~40GB private/committed and 18GB working, which is insanely high, and more than most people even have.

The real problem here, though, is that this is not a new issue. This has been reported by others in the past and has therefore been known for *SEVERAL* years and, in typical MS fashion, has been ignored. After all, why fix problems when you can just put a new glossy coat over everything and resell it as a new version. This is the THIRD Microsoft product bug that's existed for years that I've experienced in the past two days, two of which are OS-related. And one severe bug with explorer that I found a while back, where I can consistently get it to crash and close all explorer windows, and I know exactly what the problem is, when I reported it to MS and told them I'd give them the info if they were interested, they never even bothered to write back. So they really just don't give a sh*t. Which is why I'm not writing this as a question, as I don't expect anything more than the sfc and dism useless canned responses, and I don't expect MS to actually fix anything. I'm writing this so others that are running into this issue will see this and see that they're having the issue BECAUSE MS REFUSES TO FIX A SEVERE, OS-CRASHING BUG THAT THEY'VE KNOWN ABOUT FOR ***YEARS***. Just like when I was searching about it, I found a post from a few years ago complaining about the same thing and saying they found similar complaints from a few years back still. Users need to see how little MS actually cares, though I'm sure most users of this site already know that based on the typical answers given and the frustration seen in the responses to those "answers," which is why this is literally one of the last sites I bother checking for solutions to problems.

 

recycle bin

Hi George,

To prevent your files from being deleted from the Recycle Bin, we suggest increasing the maximum file size your Recycle Bin can keep by following the steps below:

• Right click on the Recycle Bin icon.
• Under the Settings for selected location, select Custom size.
• Fill up the box for your allotted maximum file size for your Recycle Bin.

Let us know if you need further assistance.

 

Recycle Bin gone

Hi,

I apologize for the delayed response.

I suggest you to try the steps provided in the help article below to show the recycle bin in the desktop and check if it helps.

Show or hide the Recycle Bin

Let us know the result.