Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

jman995x

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 8, 2007
199
3
I was about to lose my mind.

A couple of days ago I found that I couldn't empty my trash.
I kept getting the error message in the title of this post.
  • I have a program called "Smart Trash"...nope.
  • I tried "Super Empty Trash"...nope.
  • I ran some terminal commands followed by a Repair Disk Permissions...nope.
  • Option-Empty...nope.
  • I booted VMWare Fusion / XP, and did a CHKDSK...nope.
  • I tried creating an empty folder and dragging the files (17 of them) into the empty folder, then deleting the empty folder, but my computer wouldn't let me pull the files out of the trash and move them to the new folder.
  • I put the files into A Better Finder Rename and tried to rename them...nope.

Then, I did something that you'd never think would solve the problem, but for some reason it did.

I opened up the trash, did a Cmd-A to select all, then a Cmd-I to find out how (collectively) big all of these files were and when my Mac tried to access the files to see their size, they disappeared.
I have no idea why that was the thing that worked, but my Trash is empty and the paper in my trash icon is gone.

Just thought I'd share this because I know there are others out there that have tried everything as well. I'm not promising this will work for you, but what have you got to lose, right?

J.
 

GoCubsGo

macrumors Nehalem
Feb 19, 2005
35,741
153
Curious, if you have windows installed and you trash something doesn't it go into the windows recycle bin or no? I've never bothered with windows on my Mac. Sorry to derail, but I was curious and rebooting is the best option (which was said).
 

GoCubsGo

macrumors Nehalem
Feb 19, 2005
35,741
153
Ah I got it. I was confused as I saw reference to windows there when he was trying to fix the issue.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.