WINDOWS file in recycle bin

I have this extremely odd occurence happening with my computer.

I will be on my computer and notice that there is something in my recycle bin even though I haven't deleted anything. When I go to empty it, it will ask me if I'm sure I want to delete windows. So I immediately go OH **** and open up my recycle bin. But there is nothing in it.

I go to folder options and make sure that I am able to see all files and folders and all file extensions but still it shows nothing.

I have Norton Antivirus and Windows XP Home. The only way I can get it out of the recycle bin is to dump several other files in and click on restore all.

This is the second time this has happened. Has anyone heard of a virus that does this or could it be something else? If it is a virus, Norton can not detect it.

Thanks,
Watcher

I've had it happen before too. The only thing I could come up with is that it was a program I was using at the time, Windows Washer. The program was a cleaner, erased all your temp internet files, etc, and it caused several other oddities in my computer, enough that I just stopped using it. In my case, you could just restart the computer (except I couldn't restart while I was using windows washer, had to shut down and power up again :rolleyes: ) and the file would be gone.

I have seen peculiar things involving the recycle bin when I was researching system cleaning and file deletion software. It sound like this could be similar?

I have also seen problems with IE caused by the same software. My general conclusion was that this sort of software is best run before shutting down, rather than on boot-up.

I am beginning to suspect that the recycle bin works somewhat differently under Win XP? as things that would be deleted securely in other OSes still seem to be recoverable in XP.

Cheers

check the task manager and see if any strange programs are running or any programs running with Windows in the name. ive had that happen to me once or twice, but that was a while ago so i dont really remember how to make it go away. i dont think that if you hit empty it will do anything to Windows...but you probably dont want to try this out unless you have it backed up.