Undeletable ghost item in trash

[i.shaun]

I didn't read everything, but judging by the large number of posts, I guess no one searched, or found the proper way to fix it.

I had a ghost item that was Not locked, and the only program that seemed to be accessing it was Finder.app (well duh, it's always open)

I was out of ideas on how to delete it, and quick thread searches were all about locked files in trash (which was not the case here).


This Thread should point you in the right direction. There are links to other threads that do the trick.

First, try the "force trash to empty" from terminal. Failing that, delete the trash can itself (via terminal). Once deleted, you must log out or restart. Upon logging back in, a new Trash can will be created on your account, free of phantom files and with proper permissions. I did it, and it's worked flawlessly ever since.

 

[i.shaun]

Being as bored as I am, i'll just type the stuff you need to know here:

Type commands exactly as shown, or dire consequences could occur

To force trash to empty:
Open Terminal Macintosh HD>Applications>Utilities>Terminal.app

In Terminal, type exactly the following: sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/*

Press Return.

Type Admin Password when promted, and press OK.


-------If that fails you, as it did me, The next step will work.---------

Launch Terminal

Type exactly the following: sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash

Press Return

Type Admin password when prompted, press Ok.

Anything sent to trash will be immediately deleted, because there is no Trash to keep it in.

Restart you mac, and a new Trash will be created on your account.

 

[scotty96LSC]

Crap
None of this deleted my ghosts in the trash.
Where's Vinkman when you need him?

 

[BileGhost]

Hi
>>Try to drag that File to the the Desktop and enable root and go to the user in Mac Hd and delete it .
>>It will delete that

I've already fixed this, but just so you know, I couldn't drag the file to the desktop. Its one of the first things I tried, as soon as I touched it, it disappeared, to reappear next time I opened the trash (Hence "ghost object")

 

[JimmYing]

I got the same problem

Hi there,
I am getting the same problem and I can't remove that Alias kind item in my trash. I have a MacBook Pro 15' bought in november 2007, up to date.
I have a partition with windows XP pro on it (about 20GB)

the ghost item appeared recently after a crash. I use to boot on windows to play counter strike...

I also have an external hard drive Maxtor of 500GB that i formated to work in read/write on both mac os X and windows platform.

when I boot on windows and have my hard drive mounted in windows; if i restart on OS X, leopard tells that it can't mount or have trouble mounting correctly the harddrive...
While in Windows, if i eject safely the harddrive and then reboot on OS X no problem occurs.

on top of that I recently crashed on OS X and had a hard reset.

since then I have this ghost item in my trash, can't remove drag rename. (it as a serie of weird characters like dots and nano letters... kind of weird names we can find on Myspace title or any cheap IM.... to make fancy names...you see...

anyway apparently when i eject the windows drive from OS X desktop the item disapear and not reappear which can determine that it is related to the windows drive and bootcamp.

but now i don't know what to do.
thanks

 

[lawcodename]

I think I've found the answer..

Hi all,

I had exactly the same problem, and here's how I fixed it. I had this problem with a file in my Mac OS trash I couldn't delete with this date. Do you, by chance, have Windows installed on your Mac via Boot Camp, Parallels, or other program? The cause was a corrupted file in Windows. I went into Windows, and tried to delete the .Trashes folder on the C: drive. When it wouldn't let me delete the folder, I went to the C: drive, right clicked it, chose Properties, and checked the C: drive (chose "automatically fix the system errors" box). Then rebooted Windows, which ran the disk check. It found he error in the .Trashes folder, converted it to a file, and I could then go to the C: drive, find the .Trashes file, and delete it. Once I did that, the file in my Mac OS trash was gone.