How to empty all the recycle bins at once

How to empty all the recycle bins at once

I run into this every now and then when I’m trying to free up space on a server and other users have left lots of data in the recycle bins. This may be old news to most, but I just found it!

First turn off “hide protected operating system files” in the view settings so you can see what format the recycle bin shows up as under the version of server you are using. Then run the following.

RD /s c:\$Recycle.bin

Ta da!