Recycle Bin Fun

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The Recycle Bin is a funny thing - it has a lot of limitations compared to other normal icons. But we discovered that you can do all sorts of weird things with its Context menu.  This tip will only show you how to fool around with the Recycle Bin Context menu and the appearance of the icon. What else you can do with it is left to the ingenuity of the reader.

Open the Registry editor and go to: (Note:  Changing the registry can cause unexpected results.  Always make a backup of the registry before making any changes.)

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\ShellFolder

¤ To add Rename to the menu, change Attributes to 50 01 00 20
¤ To add Delete to the menu, change Attributes to 60 01 00 20
¤ To add both Rename and Delete to the menu, change Attributes to 70,01,00,20

To restore the Recycle Bin to Windows defaults including un-deleting the icon after deletion:

¤ To Restore the icon, go to

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Desktop\
NameSpace\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}

and add a key named Recycle Bin.

¤ To reset Windows defaults, go to:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\ShellFolder

and change Attributes to 40 01 00 20.

For some more practically useless edits to the context menu go to:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\ShellFolder

¤ To add Copy to the menu, change Attributes to 41 01 00 20
¤ To add Cut to the menu, change Attributes to 42 01 00 20
¤ To add Copy and Cut to the menu, change Attributes to 43 01 00 20
¤ To add Paste to the menu, change Attributes to 44 01 00 20
¤ To add Copy and Paste to the menu, change Attributes to 45 01 00 20
¤ To add Cut and Paste to the menu, change Attributes to 46 01 00 20
¤ To add Cut, Copy and Paste to the menu, change Attributes to 47 01 00 20

The above edits are more on the fun side than useful but the Rename and Delete can sometimes be practical. At least now you don't have to worry about deleting it since you can always bring it back.