Sometimes the Recycle Bin of a partition/volume can become corrupted. When it does it prevents you from deleting files or takes up space that cannot be reclaimed by emptying the Recycle Bin, or both. To reset the Recycle Bin for a particular volume or partition, start up a command prompt with Administrative privileges and delete the $RECYCLE.BIN folder from the partition/volume in question. Needless to say you will loose everything in that folder. When you delete a file on that volume/partition next, the Recycle Bin will be automatically regenerated.

Example command:

rd /s E:\$RECYCLE.BIN

Where E: is the volume or partition with the corrupt Recycle Bin.