Empty recycle bin with Powershell V2

Question

Is there a way to empty the recycle bin using Powershell 2.0.

I do not want to update Powershell.

Answer 1

You could clear recycle bin via com object. Like so:

$Shell= New-Object -ComObject Shell.Application 
$Bin = $Shell.NameSpace(10)
foreach ($Item in @($Bin.Items())){Remove-item $Item.Path -Force}

Answer 2

You could also directly call SHEmptyRecycleBin Win32 function:

$definition = @'
[DllImport("Shell32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)]
public static extern uint SHEmptyRecycleBin(IntPtr hwnd, string pszRootPath, uint dwFlags);
'@
$winApi = Add-Type -MemberDefinition $definition -Name WinAPI -Namespace Extern -PassThru
$winApi::SHEmptyRecycleBin(0, $null, 7)

All recycle bins are deleted, no confirmation message is shown, no progress bar, no sound.