Hi Stephen McC and welcome to Crystal XP 
You said that Recycle Bin icon on your dock is not working.I think it is due to the removal of the registry.There is an other method by which you can safely hide the Recycle bin icon from your desktop without harassing registry which is as follow:
Go to Start and select Run ,type gpedit.msc and press enter.It will open the Group Policy.At the right side ,you will see a menu of directories.Go to User Configuration->Administrative Templates->Desktop.In the main windows ,you will see a option saying Remove Recycle Bin icon from desktop.Double click on it and select Disable option ,press enter.You will see the Recycle Bin icon on your desktop.Make a shortcut of Recycle Bin and place it in a safe place.Now you can safely hide the Recycle Bin icon from desktop by using the Group policy.
I don't know the exact location of Type Recycle Bin.However ,you can access it by typing "::{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}" (without quotes) in the address bar of explorer or in run dialogue box.It will direct you to Recycle Bin.
... i can still delete files by dragging them into the recycle bin icon on my object dock that is part of the vista inspirat brico pack --- here lies the problem - i can no longer open the recycle bin to view/restore it's contents when i click on the icon. Nothing happens at all. So what i need to know is how i can view the recycle bin folder from its physical location on my drive - where is it???? Thanks for any assistance! 
