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Trash is stuck on "emptying"

J

jive turkey

macrumors 6502
Original poster
My trash bin was rather full so I decided to empty it this morning. It was going along swimmingly at first, but about 75% of the way through (according to the progress bar), it stopped progressing. It has now been sitting at "Emptying the trash. . . items to delete: 139" for about 12 hours. I tried logging off and I tried rebooting, but the system tells me it isn't allowed because Finder is busy.

Do I have any alternatives besides holding down the power button and forcing the machine off? I fear that may harm my drive. I don't see anything in activity monitor that indicates trash deletion for me to try a force quit on.

Thanks!
 
jive turkey said:
My trash bin was rather full so I decided to empty it this morning. It was going along swimmingly at first, but about 75% of the way through (according to the progress bar), it stopped progressing. It has now been sitting at "Emptying the trash. . . items to delete: 139" for about 12 hours. I tried logging off and I tried rebooting, but the system tells me it isn't allowed because Finder is busy.

Do I have any alternatives besides holding down the power button and forcing the machine off? I fear that may harm my drive. I don't see anything in activity monitor that indicates trash deletion for me to try a force quit on.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

1. Force quit Finder
2. Open Terminal
3. cd ~/.Trash
4. rm -fr * (make very very very sure you are in the .Trash folder as this command will erase ALL files with no prompt. You have been warned.)
5. exit Terminal
 
Thanks. When I forced quit on Finder it actually cut off the computer, so I no longer have to worry about the consequences of forcing a restart! The rest of your steps worked fine. Thanks again.
 
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