Recycle Bin Corruption Warning Observed After Windows Bare Metal Restore
After performing a Bare Metal Restore (BMR) on Windows client, the following warning message may appear after login or when accessing the desktop.
The Recycle Bin on C:\ is corrupted. Do you want to empty the Recycle Bin for this drive?
The prompt continues to appear until "Yes" is selected..
The warning may appear for each drive present on the restored system, not just the C: drive.
The hidden system folders $Recycle.Bin and System Volume Information may be visible on all drives.
This message may appear even when the Recycle Bin does not contain any user data.
This issue occurs because the $RECYCLE.BIN folder may not be fully synchronized or correctly reinitialized during the Bare Metal Restore process.
This behavior is cosmetic and does not indicate any corruption of the operating system or restored user data .
The issue can be resolved by recreating the Recycle Bin folder on the affected volume(s).
Steps to resolve the issue.
- Log in to the restored system.
- Open Command Prompt with Administrator privileges.
- Run the following command for each affected drive:
RD C:\$Recycle.bin /s /q
Note:
Replace C: with the appropriate drive letter if other volumes are also affected.
- Restart the system.
Ensure that the SYSTEM account has Full Control permissions on the root of each restored NTFS volume.
This issue does not impact system functionality or data integrity outside of the Recycle Bin.
Any data deleted by accepting the prompt is limited to the Recycle Bin contents only.
If data existed in the Recycle Bin at the time of backup, it can be recovered using a redirected restore:
- Navigate to the Recovery tab in the NetBackup web UI.
- Select the affected Windows client.
- Browse to the following path:
C:\$RECYCLE.BIN - Select the "$RECYCLE.BIN" folder.
- 5. Choose "Restore everything to original location" and start the restore. The data will get restored in Recycle bin.
Ensure that the SYSTEM account has Full Control permissions on the root of each restored NTFS volume.
This issue does not impact system functionality or data integrity outside of the Recycle Bin.
Any data deleted by accepting the prompt is limited to the Recycle Bin contents only.