I have been trying for at least a year to delete these stupid 0-byte files in the NPROTECT folder from when norton antivirus installed the stupid “protected recycle bin” garbage without my consent. I finally stumbled across the method in a posting somewhere.

This will force windows to delete the files. It uses some tricky UNC path instead of the drive-based path. Here it is. You type the following line into a dos prompt:

del \\?\C:\RECYCLER\NPROTECT\*.* /P

Note: There is a bug in senews. there should be TWO slashes before the ?. Sorry, I will try to fix it eventually.

Substitute the C: with the drive letter of your choice. It was amazing. It actually deleted all the files. Finally my drive is free of these anomalous things. Enjoy!