"Windows" in Recycle Bin?!

I just saw that my recycle bin icon was showing that something was in there so I went in and saw nothing in there. It was weird cos I still had the option to "Empty Recycle Bin" which shouldn't show up there, so I changed folder options to show hidden file thinking maybe thats what it was but still nothing showed up.
Finally I thought I'd click empty and see what it says and was asked to delete "WINDOWS". Didn't know what was going on so I reset my laptop and looked again and now the recycle bin is actually empty.

So...what just happened?

 

Your copy of xp wants to commit suicide, plain and simple. Excellent job saving it though.

Oh so what really happened? the thing that was stuck or whatever in the recycle bin probably wasn't windows itself, just a related file that had that name, probably a temp file windows created?

 

I don't think you can delete Windows files cause they are copy-protected. Or they are read-only.

 

i had that problem; numerous times! the remedy usually to creat an new folder then put it in recyble bin than delete it, then everything is fine again

 

everything seemed to go back to normal after the restarting the laptop so thats one remedy. Seems to work a lot of the time with many problems, I knew a guy in college who got a reputation for being a computer whiz cos he told everyone to restart windows when they had a problem and that usually solved it. Don't know what would have happened if he actually had a proper problem.

 

yeah, i've noticed that too... at college a lot of people leave their laptops on 24/7, and they'll be like, "hey can you come fix my computer" and i politely refuse until they restart it...