Can't empty trash - items "in use"

I am trying to uninstall Palm desktop software from my Powerbook G4. I have located all the associated files and applications and put them in the trash. When I try to empty, however, I get messages that the following are in use, preventing the trash from emptying: User Data, which is a file that I found in a palm folder and put in the trash with everything else; USB Notifier, which I cannot find anywhere - tried a Spotlight search, etc.; Transport Monitor, which is another Palm-associated application, which I put in the trash; Localized.rsrc, same deal as USB Notifier, can't find it anywhere, don't know what it is...
So... any ideas?
Thanks a lot!
David

You may have background processes still running for the Palm. Open Activity Monitor and look for any processes associated with the Palm software. If any are running simply select them and click on the Quit icon in the toolbar. Then try emptying the Trash.
If you continue to have problems then visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on solving Trash problems.

Similar Messages

Can't empty Trash "file in use"?

The file referred to is called "Localised.rsrc" how can I find it and remove it soo that I can empty the trash?
The files in question are an aborted install of Palm Connection software if that's relevant and I suspect the file in use is some sort of diary event.
Can anyone advise?

Hi again - I went through the first page you referenced again and although it didn't fit the scenario (it's not a part downloaded file) I hadn't tried secure delete so this time I did and it worked.
For the record the "localized.rsrc" file wasn't even an active process so I don't know why it was a problem.
Must remember that for the future and thanks again for your help.

Can't empty trash in OSX10.6.8. Used Trashit unsucessfully. If I run sudo rm -ri ~/.Trash, terminal crashes

Can't empty trash in OSX10.6.8. Used Trashit unsucessfully. If I run sudo rm -ri ~/.Trash, terminal crashes. PowerMac G-5

This should do the job without all the Ys. BUT you must be 100% certain you have entered the command EXACTLY as written below. One typo and you could lose all the data in your user. Copy/paste only and TRIPLE check it's entered properly in Terminal. The -f option, instead of the -i option will force empty and delete immediately. No questions. (rm is remove/delete, -r is everything inside the folder, -f is force, no questions)
sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash
There is a single space between sudo and rm
" rm and -rf
" -rf and ~/.Trash
NO SPACES IN ~/.Trash
It may take a while, depending on how many items are being deleted. You'll know it's done when you get a new $ sign prompt.

-8003 Error "Can't Empty Trash" only with specific item

Tried to get rid of a folder for an applicaiton that I'd downloaded & installed on a trial basis, then decided not to buy.
Any time I trash this folder with the app and related files, I get the "Can't Empty Trash -8003" error.
If I remove that folder, I can empty the trash fine.
Any ideas?
(the download app is Extensis Portfolio 8.5)

You could try using TrashIt!
Here's a cnet article about -8003:
Here's another discussion on the same topic.
Here's a general article on solving trash problems.

Emailing Excel sheets-can't empty trash

I notice anytime I send someone an Excel spreadsheet & then dump that excel into trash I can't empty trash, why is this? I close down all excel worksheets. I even trash the sent mail that had the excel attachment. Why does it think there's still an open Excel running? Is there a simpler solution then having to use Mac Janitor or Onyx everytime I do this?

Sometimes the Mail application will hold up the process. I can't explain why, but next time try quiting Mail when you have that problem. Then you should be able to empty the trash.

Can't empty trash because of error code -8003

I can't empty trash which contains numerous items because of error code -8003. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Read other postings. Downloaded Trash It. Problem solved. EC

Have file in Trash and can not empty trash . Showing 63 files and tried to shut down and restart and still will not empty

Have file in Trash and can not empty trash . Showing 63 files and tried to shut down and restart and still will not empty.Anyone know what can be done?

You are welcome. Glad I could help/
Allan

How can I empty trash? It won't empty. I received error code -8003.

How can I empty trash? It won't empty. I received error code -8003.

Usually rebooting clears it so you can empty the trash, otherwise:
Can't empty trash:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1526?viewlocale=en_US
How to Force Empty the Trash:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/trash.html#Anchor-Force-11481

Can't empty Trash due to error codes

I have begun getting error codes when I attempt to empty Trash. For example:
+"The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8003)."+
Of course, if I use SuperEmptyTrash, I can empty Trash. But, I should not have to do it that way.
I would appreciate any insight into what may be happening here.

Profinite wrote:
Since these two external drives had been backed up previously, this process must have resulted in Time Machine deleting the previous backups of these two external drives.
I don't think so. When adding an item to the Exclude list, previous backups should not be deleted. And even when Time Machine does delete something, it's deleted immediately. TM never moves an item to the Trash.
So I suspect that something else is going on. Try disconnecting all of your external drives and unmount all disk images. Do you then still have the same problem emptying the Trash?

Can't empty trash in Finder

Hey out there!
I can't seem to empty trash in Finder (Mt. Lion). It starts deleting 45k items, and then simply quits. I deleted a whole slew of apps and files which were transferred from my really OLD iMac. Did I overload it's capacity?
Thank you so much for any help.
Kind regards
LHM1948

Kappy,
Here is yet another stupid question. How do I "Unstuff the archive"? I am not even sure I know what the archive is... A little bit of knowledge on a computer, can be, indeed, a danger!
I did successfully download Trash It; thank you for that! Now I am reading the instructions to use it, and the first step is Unstuff the archive... AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH.
Thank you for your patience.
LHM1948
PS Are you aware of the best way to find an iMac Mt. Lion expert without having to schlep to the Apple Store. There isn't one close to me, and I am going crazy trying to get a handle on this Mt.Lion!

Can't Empty Trash With Large Number of Files

Running OS X 10.8.3
I have a very large external drive that had a Time Machine backup on the main partition. At some point, I created a second partition, then started doing backups on the new partition. On Wed, I finally got around to doing some "housecleaning" tasks I'd been putting off. As part of that, I decided to clean up my external drive. So... I moved the old, unused and unwanted Backups.backupdb that used to be the Time Machine backup, and dragged it to the Trash.
Bad idea.
Now I've spent the last 3-4 days trying various strategies to actually empty the trash and reclaim the gig or so of space on my external drive. Initially I just tried to "Empty Trash", but that took about four hours to count up the files just to "prepare to delete" them. After the file counter stopped counting up, and finally started counting down... "Deleting 482,832 files..." "Deleting 482,831 files..." etc, etc... I decided I was on the path to success, so left the machine alone for 12-14 hours.
When I came back, the results were not what I expected. "Deleting -582,032 files..." What the...?
So after leaving that to run for another few hours with no results, I stopped that process. Tried a few other tools like Onyx, TrashIt, etc... No luck.
So finally decided to say the **** with the window manager, pulled up a terminal, and cd'ed to the .Trash directory for my UID on the USB volume and did a rm -rfv Backups.backupdb
While it seemed to run okay for a while, I started getting errors saying "File not found..." and "Invalid file name..." and various other weird things. So now I'm doing a combination of rm -rfing individual directories, and using the finder to rename/cleanup individual Folders when OSX refuses to delete them.
Has anyone else had this weird overflow issue with deleting large numbers of files in 10.8.x? Doesn't seem like things should be this hard...

I'm not sure I understand this bit:
If you're on Leopard 10.5.x, be sure you have the "action" or "gear" icon in your Finder's toolbar (Finder > View > Customize Toolbar). If there's no toolbar, click the lozenge at the upper-right of the Finder window's title bar. If the "gear" icon isn’t in the toolbar, selectView > Customize Toolbar from the menubar.
Then use the Time Machine "Star Wars" display: Enter Time Machine by clicking the Time Machine icon in your Dock or select the TM icon in your Menubar.
And this seems to defeat the whole purpose:
If you delete an entire backup, it will disappear from the Timeline and the "cascade" of Finder windows, but it will not actually delete the backup copy of any item that was present at the time of any remaining backup. Thus you may not gain much space. This is usually fairly quick
I'm trying to reclaim space on a volume that had a time machine backup, but that isn't needed anymore. I'm deleting it so I can get that 1GB+ of space back. Is there some "official" way you're supposed to delete these things where you get your hard drive space back?

Can't empty trash in iPhoto 9.1.1

At some point, probably since upgrading to iPhoto 9 ('11), I stopped being able to empty the iPhoto trash.
When I bring up the trash album, it shows the number of items in the trash (currently up to 2300), but there are no photos listed. Clicking Empty Trash from any of three places - inside the trash folder, by right-clicking on Trash, or under the "iPhoto" menu - all do nothing except generate a system beep.
Deleting new photos makes the number of items in the Trash increase, but it seems like iPhoto thinks there's nothing in the Trash.
I tried to figure out where iPhoto stores Trash info. The best I could find was /iPhoto Library/Database/Albums/trashAlbum.apalbum which is modified regularly, but that's a nearly empty file (only 4KB, whereas most other "albums" are larger).
I've tried all the different recovery options (Repair library, repair permissions, recover orphaned photos, etc) 3 or 4 times each, but no change.
Rebuilding my library from scratch isn't an option. I can't lose 7 years' worth of comments and things.
Any ideas??

Download iPhoto Library Manager and use its rebuild function. This will create a new library based on data in the albumdata.xml file. Not everything will be brought over - no slideshows, books or calendars, for instance - but it should get all your albums and keywords back.
Because this process creates an entirely new library and leaves your old one untouched, it is non-destructive, and if you're not happy with the results you can simply return to your old one.
Regards
TD

Can not empty Trash

Hi there, I have recently had a corrupt iphoto library. I have extracted the pictures and created a new library. After doing this I deleted the old library, which is in my MAC trash (not iphoto trash).
I can not empty my trash and have searched everywhere online for a resolution, these are things I have tried ....help I need to dump this large library.
Thanks
1- Right Click - empty trash
     I get The operation can’t be completed because the item “iPhoto Library .photolibrary” is in use.
          I have searched this error message and tried using terminal to see what has this in use using the following - couldn't find anything
                    xxx-iMac:~ ryanromero$ lsof | grep iPhoto Library .photolibrary
                    grep: Library: Is a directory
                    grep: .photolibrary: No such file or directory
2 - I've tried doing Secure Empty Trash in which i get the below message
        The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access some of the items.
3- I have tried using terminal to empty the trash using the following command - It acts like it will delete it but the trash is still there.
     Ryan-Romeros-iMac:~ ryanromero$ sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/*
     Password:
4- I have also tried this which said it would delete the file but doesn't in terminal
     Ryan-Romeros-iMac:~ ryanromero$ sudo rm -rf /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto\ Library\ .photolibrary
Password:
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/._iPhotoAux.db: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/._iPhotoLock.data: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/._iPhotoMain.db: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/._Library6.iPhoto: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/._ProjectDBVersion.plist: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/._Projects.db: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/._DataModelVersion.plist: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/._tmSync.plist: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/apdb/._BigBlobs.apdb-journal: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/apdb/._Faces.db-journal: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/apdb/._History.apdb-journal: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/apdb/._ImageProxies.apdb-journal: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/apdb/._Library.apdb-journal: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/apdb/._lockfile.pid: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/apdb/._Properties.apdb-journal: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/apdb/BigBlobs.apdb-journal: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/apdb/Faces.db-journal: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/apdb/History.apdb-journal: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/apdb/ImageProxies.apdb-journal: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/apdb/Library.apdb-journal: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/apdb/Properties.apdb-journal: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/apdb: Directory not empty
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/DataModelVersion.plist/._ImageProxies.apdb-journal: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database/DataModelVersion.plist: Directory not empty
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Database: Directory not empty
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/iLifeShared/apdb/._ImageProxies.apdb-journal: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/iLifeShared/apdb: Directory not empty
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/iLifeShared: Directory not empty
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/iPhotoAux.db: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/iPhotoMain.db: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Masters: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Previews/Database/apdb/._ImageProxies.apdb-journal: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Previews/Database/apdb: Directory not empty
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Previews/Database: Directory not empty
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Projects.db: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary/Thumbnails: Input/output error
rm: /Volumes/Iomega_HDD/.Trashes/501/iPhoto Library .photolibrary: Directory not empty

First, never try to empty the Trash in the shell. It's dangerous and unnecessary, and as you've discovered, it doesn't always work.
It's possible that the external drive is malfunctioning, but before you draw that conclusion, quit iPhoto and try again to empty the Trash.

Can't empty trash bin error: -8003

I'm trying to delete files from my Mac.
Whenever I try to empty my trash bin this message appears: Can't complete operation. Error found. (error: -8003)
Please help!

This is most commonly due to deleting files from a Time Machine backup using the Finder, which is not something you should be doing. You could easily have corrupted your backups at this point. If you can put those items back where they originally came from, that would be preferable. If not, see:
Can't empty the trash after deleting backups via the Finder
If this isn't due to deleting Time Machine backups, there may be other issues. Forcing the trash to empty using the methods that have been given by others may solve the problem, but cover up other symptoms. I would recommend repairing the hard drive and permissions using Disk Utility.

Help-can not empty trash due to localized.rsrc file

I have dumped all of the contents of my cloned backup hard drive to the trash. Usually I can empty it w/ no problem. However, it will now permit me to empty only part of the contents, and returns a message that it is stopped because the item "Localized.rsrc" is in use. When I use spotlight to find this glitch it shows me that Localized.rsrc is a Unix exe file in the following location: Library/Frameworks/Stuffit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/English.|proj'
I tried the suggestions from this forum at http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2313873&#2313873 with no success. How can I empty the trash and get on with my life? Thank you!
Bob

If I were you I would put the Palm stuff back where it came from, that is drag it out of the trash and onto your backup drive, and then empty the trash. This would at least get everything else out of the trash. You could then try the Terminal remove command on the Palm folder:
sudo rm -R [drag the Palm folder here]
Hit return and enter your password. The command would look something like this:
Tiger:~ francine$ sudo rm -R /Volumes/BackUpDrive/PalmWhatever/
Password:
Does that return an error message?
Francine
Francine
Schwieder

Can't empty trash - items "in use"

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