Windows 7: recycle bin takes forever

Windows 7 64 bit. When i click the recycle bin it sometimes taks as long as 20 seconds to open. Otherwise the PC runs great, is fairly state of the art and has a SS drive. The only other speed issue is at times, tho not nearly as often, it will take rather long for a image file to open in the windows photo viewer. But it's the recycle bin that almost always does this. The system also have very little running normally. There are maybe 12-15 things running in task manager at startup.
Any idea what could cause this?

Without seeing what's running, it's hard to say. You also don't have any system specs entered. Do you have any NAS or shared drives? Multiple partitions on the same drive?

Or a large "green" drive?

This is how to fix the recycle bin.
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IMPORTANT: The following procedure permanently deletes all files and folders which are already in the Recycle Bin (from all user accounts in the system) and cannot be recovered.

Recycle Bin Corrupted - Cannot Delete File or Folder - Vista Forums

1. Open an elevated Command Prompt by clicking Start > All Programs > Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and select Run as administrator.

2. Type the following command rd /s /q C:\$Recycle.bin and press Enter:

This clears out the $Recycle.bin folder for C:\ drive. You may have to do this for each hard disk partition in your system, by changing C to the drive letter of the other drive.

3. Type exit to close the Command Prompt window.

I had a problem with the sleep settings on my WD Green 1.5 TB HDD, however that effected all operations related to that drive (not just the Recycle Bin).

The OP stated that he had an SSD (it's not clear if he has a HDD as well).
Do SSDs have a sleep setting?

Do you have another image viewer program?
If yes, do you have the same problem?

If no, I recommend IrfanView.
It does a lot more than just view pictures.
You can view video, listen to music, view txt files (and possibly pdf files with something called ghostscript).
IrfanView - Official Homepage - one of the most popular viewers worldwide

Hello iknowjohnny,

I got a wild theory about this.

Do you happen to have any HDDs connected as well?

If you do, then check using the tutorial below to see if you happen to have Windows set to turn off hard drives after being idle for so many minutes. If so, set it to "Never".

Hard Drive - Turn Off Hard Disk After Idle or Never

If set to turn off, this would cause a delay to open the Recycle Bin while it's waiting on the HDDs to spin back up to read their $Recycle.bin file.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Hmmm, that sounds like a possibility, and yes, i do have 2 of them. But the problem is i rarely access them, as they are storage and i would hate to have them spinning all the time, as they would wear out a lot faster. As it is i could see them lasting the rest of my life at my age. But spinning for the 16 hours a day it's one would severely shorten that and i don't want to always be worrying my stored files will be lost. So if thats the case i'd rather live with the bin taking it's time. Sounds like you are probably right since it doesn't do this is i open it again shortly after it was opened last.

That sounds like the issue then.

You could temporarily set it to "Never" for a day or so of normal usage to make sure though.

Yeah, i may do that just so i know. If thats the issue tho, as i said i will just live w/it.

Sounds like a plan. Please let us know how it went.

IMO, you are probably better off leaving your HDDs spinning.

I think that stopping and starting them, would be more likely to wear them out.