Why do I get this message when I empty the trash?

[chocolate632]

Can anyone tell me why I keep getting this message? I know for a fact that some of the things I trash are not in use but it still comes up. I trashed a tv series from iTunes and it told me that only one of the episodes was in use while the rest emptied properly. I emptied again and it trashed the remaining episode. Its more of an annoyance really, since I find myself having to empty it twice all the time. Any suggestions?

 

[Hellhammer]

Reboot and then empty the trash. It's enough that you have used that file since the last boot and it may cause issues. Reboot always fixes it for me

 

[powers74]

reboot

before you do that you can always quit any app that is capable of playing the file and then try to delete.

 

[notjustjay]

Sometimes it's the Finder itself. It might be in the middle of trying to load the file in order to give you an icon preview for Quick Look or for the preview icon in Column View. Usually the Finder is pretty quick about that, but if it's a file on a USB drive or networked share, it can be just slow enough that the Finder is still trying to load a preview while you're trying to delete the file.

 

[dknightd]

Sometimes I think it is because spotlight is busy indexing that file. Or maybe time machine is busy making a copy.

 

[chocolate632]

Reboot and then empty the trash. It's enough that you have used that file since the last boot and it may cause issues. Reboot always fixes it for me

I usually just reempty the trash and it'll empty properly so there's no need for a reboot. Also, the tv episode that I deleted (in the attached picture) hasn't been opened or used for months, so I don't think that is the issue.

Sometimes it's the Finder itself. It might be in the middle of trying to load the file in order to give you an icon preview for Quick Look or for the preview icon in Column View. Usually the Finder is pretty quick about that, but if it's a file on a USB drive or networked share, it can be just slow enough that the Finder is still trying to load a preview while you're trying to delete the file.

Well, I didn't try to Quick Look that file so I don't think that's it and my Finder is usually organized in list view. Also, the file was on the main drive. It normally just happens to one file in the trash, the others seem to empty fine.

Sometimes I think it is because spotlight is busy indexing that file. Or maybe time machine is busy making a copy.

I tried deleting some files again and I checked first to make sure Spotlight wasn't indexing and it still didn't empty one file. My Time Machine backups are manual so there's no way it was making a copy either.


Its more of an annoyance than a problem really, because the trash will always empty the second time around. Something I might add is that this has just started recently, it hasn't really happened before. Thanks for the input guys!