Right click//properties//desktop tab//Customize desktop

try changing the empty icon, if that's what's messed up.

After you've emptied the Bin and refreshed the Desktop, does the icon change to the 'empty' state?

If your Recycle Bin only shows the correct icon only if you keep refreshing the deskop evey now and then, you have a similar problem to me and many other Windows users.

If you Google something like 'recycle bin icon does not refresh' you should find there are quite a few fixes you can try. The Google newsgroup things have some good results.
None are guaranteed and none I've found have fixed it for me.

i dont think it even changes when i refresh the desktop so...

and the one in display settings shows the correct ones...

belive it or not but i may have found the fix!
atleast on my win2k.

basicly its this place thats interesting:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\
{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\DefaultIcon

(here broken into two lines for readability)

the (default) entry could probably be left as anything.
but what one needs to do is add a "empty" and "full" string entry (without the quotes), with the string being the path to what icon you want it to have.

changing it via the display properties seems to change a diffrent registry key, one that atleast win2k isnt interested in it seems.

you need to search every presence of ShellIconCache.db (that's shell icon cache) in your windows installation drive. remember to turn on view hidden files in folder options.

next, delete all the "ShellIconCache.db"s. now fire up tweakui and do rebuild icons. if you don't have tweakui then get one from microsoft.com or softpedia.com or programfiles.com or filehippo.com. the rebuild icons option in tweakui is under Repair. or it might be repair icons. reboot. that's it!

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