I am using Windows 7 daily as a limited user with UAC enabled. I log in as $USER and have have a dummy user called $ADMIN with Administrative access I use for elevation purposes.
Unfortunately, some elevated applications are aware of being elevated: running Explorer as admin still shows $USER's folders and permissions. Some other applications are not, and will try and access $ADMIN's folders and permissions.
In particular, I used a program (yes, I'm looking at you, TuneUp 2010) to find and delete cruft from my system. Unfortunately, when an elevated TuneUp deletes files it uses the $ADMIN's recycling bin.
Now. I don't want to log in as $ADMIN. It's a dummy account. It isn't supposed to be logged into. It's just there for elevation purposes. I don't want it to have a profile, a home folder and settings for it.
So what I want to do is use elevation to access $ADMIN's recycle bin and cleanly empty it. Windows seems to offer no way to do so, unfortunately:
- Running Explorer as $ADMIN from the GUI will result in the $USER's folders being used. Running explorer as $ADMIN from the command prompt (using the elevate powertoy, for example) results in the following error message:
Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item.
[OK]
- Running
start .
from an elevated command prompt results in the above error message. - Running notepad as $ADMIN and using the Open dialog as a primitive Explorer shows no way to access the recycling bin. Right clicking files from that screen will result in a temporary hang and in no menu being shown.
Attempting to open the raw Recycling bin "raw" folder,
C:\$Recycle.Bin\S-1-5-21-1970411373-1708269306-xxxxxxxxxx-1007\
, from the above Open dialog results in the following error message:
Recycle Bin
You don’t have permission to open this file.
Contact the file owner or an administrator to obtain permission.
[OK]
I "fixed" the issue by issuing "del * /S /F /Q" from an elevated prompt from inside the bin "raw" folder but that's obviously not the way to go.
What should have I done instead?
It seems my question was not clear enough. How surprising. :)
Here's what I am trying to achieve. All I want to do is open this window as $ADMIN: