Can't empty Trash

[madsci954]

Hey everyone

My and wife and I are trying to empty the Trash on her MBA (2011, Lion 10.7.2) and every time we try, the empty trash window comes up but just sits there. When we cancel, it says it's stopping but, again, it just sits there, until you force quit and relaunch Finder.

What she was originally trying to do was uninstall Sims 3 (it was taking up too much space) and the files combined were about 12 GB in size. I moved the main file out (by main, I mean the biggest) and there were only a few other files in the Trash, they won't be deleted either and when I look at the info on the files, size has "--" next to them.

Not sure what to do, both my wife and I are long time PC users, slowly making the switch to Macs so we are still new with Macs.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

You can't empty the Trash or move a file to the Trash and Solving Trash Problems

 

[ZipZap]

Deleting can be slow with there are a lot of files. I put a bunch of timemachine backups in the trash and it took hours to complete.

 

[madsci954]

You can't empty the Trash or move a file to the Trash and Solving Trash Problems

I tried the Option + Delete and the Empty and Recreate option. Didn't work.

I split the files up and now only have one file in the Trash, size is about 277 MB. The "Emptying the Trash..." window popped up saying "Items to Delete: 1" but the status bar has not moved, and it has been sitting for about 10 minutes now.

Is it suppose to take this long?

 

[nebrot]

Hey everyone

My and wife and I are trying to empty the Trash on her MBA (2011, Lion 10.7.2) and every time we try, the empty trash window comes up but just sits there. When we cancel, it says it's stopping but, again, it just sits there, until you force quit and relaunch Finder.

What she was originally trying to do was uninstall Sims 3 (it was taking up too much space) and the files combined were about 12 GB in size. I moved the main file out (by main, I mean the biggest) and there were only a few other files in the Trash, they won't be deleted either and when I look at the info on the files, size has "--" next to them.

Not sure what to do, both my wife and I are long time PC users, slowly making the switch to Macs so we are still new with Macs.

I'm new to Mac too and my Air did "secure erase" per factory default, which is very processor intensive (fan running high) and takes long time. Check if it comes up with this info when you attempt to delete. If it does uncheck it in the settings and it will only delete the path instead of the whole file. It took me a while on the web to figure this out