It's recycling. Deleting with Shift-Delete works much faster and uses less CPU.

Ok, thanks. Will test it.

It's recycling. Deleting with Shift-Delete works much faster and uses less CPU.

Thanks for your report.
Is the for deleting or recycling?
Isn't lower CPU usage for remote files simply caused by a fact the remote deleting performance is network-bound?

When deleting multiple (about 300-400) local files, WinSCP consumes a huge amount of CPU (according to the chart by Process Explorer, attached, most is System/Kernel time) for essentially a trivial operation. The delete is initiated by selecting all files in a folder with Ctrl-A and then pressing Delete. The same operation in a remote folder does not exhibit such phenomenon. The files are mostly < 1MB in size and are all without a file extension.

Using version 5.5.0 (build 3839) on Windows 7 Pro, GUI with the commander interface style. I remember that an earlier 5.something beta version (maybe 5.2, don't remember :( ) also had this behaviour but did not back down on its CPU usage even when finished with the deletings. After upgrading to 5.5, the CPU usage drops after the deletes finish. The hard drive is an SSD, if that makes any difference.