You'd better have reposted earlier.

Deleting the recycle bin in Windows 98 is a trivial thing after booting in MS-DOS. It's just a folder, and the MS-DOS-command to delete a folder is deltree. You might need to remove a few attributes (hidden, system, read-only) first with attrib, but it can't be more than a few minutes work all included.

It might very well be that the maintenance mode of Windows XP does have comparable options, that somebody could have told you. I've no Windows XP experience myself, but it would have worth a try.

But having a clean system again is an advantage.

Kees