recycle bin is gone

[tone102]

Can someone please help me..:) My recycle bin is gone! At the advice by an expert,I did restart in MS-DOS to restore the registry but this did nothing. I can't imagine what happened as there was no way that I accidentally deleted this. Can someone give me some suggestions? I would so appreciate it. I would even welcome your writing to me at TMc102@aol.com. I'd tinker around on my own but if I destroy this computer my son will never let me hear the end of it.
Thanks so much!
Toni

[POBrien]

First let's find out if the recycle bin is still on the hard drive. Double click on My Computer. Select View on the menu at the top of the My Computer window. Now select Folder Options. Now the View tab. Make sure "Show all files" is selected. OK out of that. No go to START then FIND>>files or folders. Search for recycled. Is it there?

[reghakr]

If you find its there like POBrien said, check to be sure this registry key exists:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\explorer\Desktop\NameSpace\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}
The (Deafult) value in the right pane should be Recycle Bin

reghakr