Something related just happened to me.
Ran a virus/spy/mal scan (Avast, Ewido, Spybot, Adaware), checked with HijackThis and
Procexp (nothing unexpected).
Tried to run ccleaner from context menu on recycle bin, nothing happened. Didn't think
much of it, unfortunately, figured it was a botched install or I'd deleted it (just uninstalled
a lot of software).
Installed latest version of ccleaner, 1.35.424, with the "open from recycle bin" option
(normally I have the "run" option).
Opened it, ran it with defaults (basic check for obvious goofs), all looks good, yadda
yadda.
Manually deleted some files from drive F to clear some space. Noted that free disk space
did not decrease. Hmmm...
As I tried to backtrack from there, I discovered that the recycle directories were gone. The
recycle structure appears to have been destroyed, the reg file above does NOT fix this, the
reg file from MS to restore an empty recycle bin doesn't work, scanning for errors doesn't
free up the disk space, neither does chkdsk (I was desperate). Tried to recover the files
but I can't recover the disk space!
I can't clear space by deleting files - the files "disappear" but the space is still allocated,
and I can't get XP to find and free that space!
My googling led me here. I'm going to keep trying to fix this (it's my main PC - so much for
relaxation or sleep).
I can't say 100% that ccleaner is to blame, but I can't find another cause and this didn't
happen earlier today when I was doing some moving and deleting on the same drive - only
after running the scans and ccleaner.
I'll add a message if I fix this, but it sure smells like ccleaner got a little exuberant in its
deletions and managed to delete some part of the system that XP doesn't automatically fix.
Now I have to delve into the mysteries of the recycle bin, and find out why it isn't rebuilding.
I REALLY don't want to do a wipe n wash on this system - that would eat my weekend with
the huge amount of stuff I have on here!