I’m seeing a strange issue where users end up with two Recycle Bin icons on their desktop. We modify the registry in "Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders" to redirect each user’s Desktop to a network path, and it seems Windows automatically creates a Recycle Bin object inside the redirected Desktop folder. Because of that, the normal Windows Recycle Bin shows up, and then an additional one appears from the redirected location. Deleting the duplicate doesn’t help — it always comes back the next morning after the user logs in.
To troubleshoot, I deleted the desktop.ini file from the Desktop and also removed the same file from shell:startup. This actually stops the second Recycle Bin temporarily, but as soon as the user moves or modifies any file on the desktop, Windows immediately recreates desktop.ini — and the duplicate Recycle Bin icon appears again. The desktop.ini file always regenerates with this content:
[.ShellClassInfo]
LocalizedResourceName=@%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll,-21787
So it looks like Windows keeps treating the redirected Desktop as a special/system shell folder and is automatically injecting the Recycle Bin whenever that folder is updated.
I’m trying to figure out why the Recycle Bin keeps regenerating in redirected Desktop folders and whether there’s a proper way to prevent the second icon from showing up. i.e., How to hide/remove the redirected recycle bin and not the actual recycle bin?
We are using a Domain environment, but Desktop redirection is not done using GPO policy.
Would appreciate any guidance from anyone who has dealt with this before. Thanks!
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