Hello Fireberd, Nothing in your link resolved my problem, although SFC did tell me that I had some bad system files and they were repaired.  Unfortunately none of these were in the Recycle bin. I did fix the problem is a sorta dangerous way.  Using my backup program Acronis ATI-2018, I backed up everything while excluding the recycle bin.  Then I restored the entire drive using the Acronis bootable rescue disk.  It took less than 30 minutes overall and my recycle bin is now truly empty. Thanks, Bill  
I purchased my Dell XPS 8920 in July, 2017.  I just discovered that I have 649 MB (330 folders, 808 files) in my $Recycle.bin folder.  I am not a computer newbie, I'm a retired computer programmer who is fairly proficient with all versions of Windows as well as DOS.  I've tried the following, all without being able to delete a single byte:Windows 10/1803:  Unhide everything, change the security of the recycle bin so that everyone has all privileges, delete the folder, delete sub folders, delete files, all without any success.CMD mode under Windows (as Administrator):  attrib $Recycle.Bin -h -s -r -a *.* /s /q,  rmdir C:\$Recycle.Bin /s /q,  del C:\$Recycle.Bin\*.* /s /q, all I get is ACCESS DENIED no matter what I try.Note that I also have a 4-year old XPS which also had a couple of MB of hidden files in the recycle bin.  The above steps completely cleared it out!If these are Dell support files, I don't want them and have deleted every support folder supplied by Dell a LONG time ago.  So . . . can anyone tell me how to completely clear my recycle bin?Thanks, Bill
How do I delete hidden files in the recycle bin?