Windows 7 has the new Taskbar, but there isn’t anyway to move the Recycle Bin to the new bar. Here’s how.

Some people like a nice and clean desktop. Others like a huge mess, but still organized. Here is a solution so that you don’t lose your Recycle Bin among the mess of other icons.

First item of business is to create a new icon on the desktop for the Recycle Bin. Right click anywhere on an empty part on the desktop and select New Shortcut. A small wizard opens. For the location, enter

%SystemRoot%explorer.exe shell:RecycleBinFolder

And click Next.

For the name of the shortcut, call it Recycle Bin.Then click the Finish button to place the new shortcut and icon on the Desktop.

The shorcut is created, but it still does not look like the Recycle Bin, does it? Easy fix. Right click on the shortcut and select Properties. Next, you can select Change Icon. Change the location for “Look for icons in this file” to %SystemRoot%system32imageres.dll. Click OK, and scroll until you see the standard recycle bin icon and select that. Then click OK again.

Lastly, drag the new shortcut to the taskbar. Now your Recycle Bin is in the taskbar, and will show the empty icon when empty and the full icon when full. Great work!