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

Alias file stuck in Trashcan

mindcrash

mindcrash

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 18, 2007
63
0
So I've had this alias file stuck in my trashcan for sometime now and I can't figure out how to get rid of it. It has a bizarre, gibberish filename that I can't even find the characters or symbols to type it out, so see the picture attached.

Do any of your gurus out there know how I can get rid of this file once and for all?

Thanks!
 

Attachments

  • Picture 1.png
    Picture 1.png
    17.8 KB · Views: 180
Hold down option while you empty the trash. If that doesn't work then you need to tell us what the Finder is telling you when you try to delete it. Where did the file come from? Are you sure it's really something that should be deleted?
 
motulist said:
Hold down option while you empty the trash. If that doesn't work then you need to tell us what the Finder is telling you when you try to delete it. Where did the file come from? Are you sure it's really something that should be deleted?
Click to expand...

Finder acts like it deletes it, no special message is given. But it never empties and that file remains.

I have no idea where the file came from, it just showed up in there one day.

I haven't tried rm yet because I don't know where to find the directory that trash is located in. Spotlight couldn't find it and none of my fumbling around could either.
 
mindcrash said:
Ahh, thanks.

Only problem is that a ls -al in ~/.Trash shows that it's empty.
Click to expand...
Try a ls -a for ~/.Trash as well. I've found very few files that can't be seen via Terminal.

The only times I've found such discrepancies between Terminal and Finder was over NFS in Tiger.
 
mindcrash said:
So I've had this alias file stuck in my trashcan for sometime now and I can't figure out how to get rid of it. It has a bizarre, gibberish filename that I can't even find the characters or symbols to type it out, so see the picture attached.

Do any of your gurus out there know how I can get rid of this file once and for all?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I recently developed this too. dir shows empty from terminal. click and dragging the aliases ( I have 3 of them) make them disappear temporarily. They re-appear within a few minutes. Have you gotten yours to go away?
 
iamnotmad said:
I recently developed this too. dir shows empty from terminal. click and dragging the aliases ( I have 3 of them) make them disappear temporarily. They re-appear within a few minutes. Have you gotten yours to go away?
Click to expand...

Nope, I haven't solved it yet. It's not too worrying, just slightly annoying.
 
mindcrash said:
Nope, I haven't solved it yet. It's not too worrying, just slightly annoying.
Click to expand...

figured out what this is. Basically at least. It is related to a bootcamp partition I have in fat32 which I also used with VMWARE fusion. I booted wxp and did a chkdsk (from c: drive properties, you'll have to reboot for it to run) and it repaired the problem. shut it down and the files in the trashcan are gone.

try it!
 
mindcrash said:
So I've had this alias file stuck in my trashcan for sometime now and I can't figure out how to get rid of it. It has a bizarre, gibberish filename that I can't even find the characters or symbols to type it out, so see the picture attached.

Do any of your gurus out there know how I can get rid of this file once and for all?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

You know you can just delete the .Trash folder and it will be recreated on a restart/login.
 
Hey! I just had a similar problem... files stuck in the trash, tried everything suggested, but nothing worked. The chkdsk comment rung a bell though... I realized the file appearing in my trash wasn't in my ~/.Trash. It was in /Volumes/<my thumb drive>/.Trashes. I ran a chkdsk on it from Windows, which showed a bunch of errors. Then I simply deleted the .Trashes directory from that thumb drive. Sure enough, my stuck files were gone. So, lesson learned is the trash can shows more than just ~/.Trash... look at your mounted volumes for their .Trashes too. I hope this helps someone in the future.
 
chkdsk worked for me

Thanks for the great info. I just used chkdsk /F from withing my bootcamp install of windows XP and that did the trick, my trash can is finally empty again.
 
Had a similar problem

Hi,
I had a similar problem with an Alias file that I wasn't able to delete. Even though I have VMWFusion installed it had nothing to do with Windows. The file was originally on an external hard drive.

I found out that it had to do with a problem in the disk. After using Disk Utility to repair both the external disk the file was also removed from the trash.

Ariel
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back