XP and Vista: Bypass the Recycle Bin

Contributor Icon Contributed by AlexTheBeast Date Icon December 9, 2003  
Tag Icon Tagged: Windows

This recipe tell how to bypass the recycle bin and delete things permanently.


Most of our deleted files should sit in the recycle bin for a while before being completely erased. It saves us all.

Occasionally, however, we all have files that we want erased from the face of the earth… and we don’t want them in the recycle bin to be found.

You can bypass the recycle bin by selecting a file and then pressing…
SHIFT-DELETE

It will ask you to confirm and then bye-bye file… forever.

Here is an example of the confirmation dialog in vista:

vista permanently delete without recycle bin

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  • Anonymous
    no way to recover? with no recover tool? if so, that's what I am looking for. want to delet personal files from my company laptop. thanks for answering.
  • Anonymous
    I am assuming you want something better than highlighting the file and pressing shift+delete?
  • mikejones
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