My trash refuses to empty. I'm running Mac OS X 10.7.3.

Hi,
My trash refuses to empty, even when left running overnight. It just seems to freeze and make the computer run really slow. The only way out is to keep the power buton pressed until the computer restarts. It says there are approx 1600 items now in the trash.
I've seen elsewhere to untick "empty trash securely" in preferences, but this was not ticked and never has been.
Is there a way to delete the items one by one?

Here's a related article on trash problems:
The X Lab: Solving Trash Problems
or you could just try using Trash It!.
Update:
If you are going to follow FrenchToast's suggestion then it is rm -rf followed by a space and then drag the file or folder into the terminal window (his post left a space out between the rm and -R -- doesn't matter whether it is -r or -R).

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Trash refuses to empty and reports error -8062

Trash refuses to empty and reports error -8062. Does this mean anything to anyone? I can use a 3rd party utility FileExaminer to do a "super delete" and that takes care of it, but why won't the trash empty normally?
Any ideas appreciated.
Paul

One person reported that this happened in Mac OS X 10.2 and 10.21 because their account's numeric UID was in the 130000 range. You can check your numeric UID by looking at the information for your user account in the NetInfo Manager, or by entering 'id -u' into the Terminal without the quote marks. Both applications are in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder.
(11277)

Trash refuses to empty (error code -8003)

I keep trying to empty the trash on my iMac but it refuses. It says "unexpected error occurred" and quotes the error code -8003.
Any suggestions?

Fantastic, thanks a lot, this link was very helpful! Especially when you want to delete all the Time machine backups before you leave for 3 weeks!

For some reason trash refuses to empty

Having a big system clear out.
Trash is full of unwanted stuff including time machine back-ups.
For some reason trash commences the secure empty but as soon as it starts it stops.
Any ideas what I need to do to resolve this.
Thanks to anyone who has the time to help.

First, don't do a secure erase. For massive amounts of stuff emptying the trash is slow enough without adding writing zeros to all the stuff.
Read this for help:
The X Lab: Solving Trash Problems
Might want to try Trash It!.

Stupid Trash refuses to fully empty!!! ughh

ok so my trash can refuses to empty ive tried everything from normal emptying to secure emptying to repairing permissons, repair disk. ive used onyx to reset everything and i dont know what else to do please help me!! its very frustrating
!:(

Read this:
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/trash.html
-Bmer
Mac Owners Support Group
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Aperture ate my picture files and they are not recoverable. The guy at the Genius Bar told me to Trash the App, empty Trash, then go to Purchases and reinstall. But Purchases says it is "Installed" so it does not let me download it again. HELP!!!!

Aperture ate my picture files and they are not recoverable. The guy at the Genius Bar told me to Trash the App, empty Trash, then go to Purchases and reinstall. But Purchases says it is "Installed" so it does not let me download it again. HELP!!!!

I typed Aperture into Spotlight and sure enough it did show up.
It looks like it is supposed to be in Apps.
But it is not there.
So I clicked on the spotlight Aperture and it opened up the App!!!!
But I do not know where it is to move it!
How can I find it?
While Aperture is running and you are seeing it in the Dock, ctrl-click (or right click) the Dock icon.
You will see a contextual menu. Click on "Options", then select "Show in Finder".
And check the "keep in Dock" mark, so you will not lose it from the Dock.

Trash says "being emptied" for hours, but doesn't empty.

So, about a week ago, I clicked empty my trash. It took a little while. A minute later, I forgot that it was running, so I closed my Mac. When I turned it back on, I realized that the trash was paused emptying and the error started. I couldn't empty my trash anymore. It just appeared like it was running by saying: "Emptying the trash...," but, in fact, it didn't. After waiting for like 10 mins, no items got deleted, so I shut down my Mac by holding the Power button until it shut up. Now, I turn it back on to try again. I waited for like an hour, but it still doesn't work. There are currently only 19 items left and they are all my photos and mp3 songs. I can't put other items to the trash nor empty the items in the trash. If you have any idea, please help ASAP

Force the Trash to empty using Terminal.app
(You will find terminal.app in utility folder)
This technique uses a Terminal command to fore the Trash to empty. Perform the following steps in the order specified:
1.
Launch Terminal, located in the Macintosh HD > Applications > Utilities folder.
2.
At the Terminal prompt, type the following command exactly as written:
sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash/*
Note that:
There is a single space after each of the terms sudorm, and -rf
command.
Assure you have typed the command exactly as written before proceeding: typographical errors in this command can have dire consequences, including erasing your hard drive!
3.
Press Return.
4.
Type your Admin password when prompted, then press Return. The files in the Trash are now deleted.

Trash does not empty completely

My trash had over 300 files when I emptied it. Nearly all were emptied, but 8 remain. The empty operation keeps running, but doesn't do anything, and I have to relaunch Finder to get out of the loop. Most of the remaining items are system files for a WD external drive.
The eight don't take up much space, and I am tempted to just let them be, but I am worried this might be a symptom of a larger problem.

actually they might got deleted ... but the file name may be still showing there...sO better check "info" of trash before deleting the next time you do so. and sometimes if the iteams are locked it could happen. better to restart your computer. Even when i delete some files in the trash. The trash becomes empty. but finders memory is still not emptied. even i do restart my computer my hard-disk couldnt be free sometimes . But aftr few dayz of use, automitacally free space created in the hard disk. SO BEFORE DELETING ANYTIN CHECK OUT ITS USED MEMORY, DEN U COULD ACTUALLY GET TO KNOWN THE FILE IS REALLY GOT DELETED OR NOT ! TNX..

Are there any advantages of using Secure Empty Trash over regular Empty Trash?

Are there any advantages of using Secure Empty Trash over regular Empty Trash?

If you are going to run around with sensitive files on your file system, you might be better off using a whole disk encryption so that every file is encrypted, any deleted file contains encrypted contents. As long a no one can access your files using your encrytpion keys, all your data is secure.
Also secure delete is not really going to do much on a Solid State Drive, and again whole disk encryption would be a better choice.
For a moderate amount of data, secure erase does not take too much time. But if you have a ton of file and/or a few really large files to erase, secure erase can take a long time to complete as it is doing multiple pass to write and overwrite the file's storage with patterns of data that make it extremely difficult to recover the original data. That takes time.
Finally, if you have been updating a document, previous editions may have been given over to free storage as new versions are written, such that when you decide to erase the file you may only be doing secure erase on the most recent copy.

Trash will only empty securely. How do I turn of secure empty trash?

Trash will only empty securely. Have repeatedly turned this off in Finder with no results. Running Mountain Lion on intel iMac. Advice much appreciated,
Geo

Back up all data. Don't continue unless you're sure you can restore from a backup, even if you're unable to log in.
This procedure will unlock all your user files (not system files) and reset their ownership and access-control lists to the default. If you've set special values for those attributes on any of your files, they will be reverted. In that case, either stop here, or be prepared to recreate the settings if necessary. Do so only after verifying that those settings didn't cause the problem. If none of this is meaningful to you, you don't need to worry about it.
Step 1
If you have more than one user account, and the one in question is not an administrator account, then temporarily promote it to administrator status in the Users & Groups preference pane. To do that, unlock the preference pane using the credentials of an administrator, check the box marked Allow user to administer this computer, then reboot. You can demote the problem account back to standard status when this step has been completed.
Triple-click the following line to select it. Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C):
{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR.. ; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_ ; sudo chmod -R u+rwX ~ $_ ; chmod -R -N ~ $_ ; } 2> /dev/null
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.
The command will take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear, then quit Terminal.
Step 2 (optional)
Step 1 should give you usable permissions in your home folder. This step will restore special attributes set by OS X on some user folders to protect them from unintended deletion or renaming. You can skip this step if you don't consider that protection to be necessary, and if everything is working as expected after step 1.
Boot into Recovery by holding down the key combination command-R at startup. Release the keys when you see a gray screen with a spinning dial.
When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select
Utilities ▹ Terminal
from the menu bar. A Terminal window will open.
In the Terminal window, type this:
res
Press the tab key. The partial command you typed will automatically be completed to this:
resetpassword
Press return. A Reset Password window will open. You’re not going to reset a password.
Select your boot volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name) if not already selected.
Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.
Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button.
Select
 ▹ Restart
from the menu bar.

Trash doesn't empty

I have had my macpro for around 18 months, no problems. This morning, I went to delete files from an external HD. As usual, I highlight the files I want to delete and then under edit, I click on Move to trash as I have done numberous times, the files are gone from the external hd. I empty the trash, it makes the usual noise but the items are still in the trash, I have emptied the trash over and over again, still the items are there. I then started the computer on Disk Warrior to check the computer and repair whatever might be wrong, it found some things that it repaired and then when that was done, I restarted the computer and it does the same thing, anyone have any ideas, suggestions?
thanks Much

Did the free space on the external drive increase when you emptied the trash? If it did, then at least the files were actually deleted but I then have no further help to give you. If not, the files are still there in the trash on the external drive. You may want to try holding down the option key when emptying the trash. This will delete locked files. OSX typically tells you if there are locked files that won't be deleted (and to delete them by holding down the option key when emptying the trash) but maybe there's a glitch and it isn't telling you this time. I often run into locked files on external drives.

After i empty trash (the secure empty doesn't work either), the system does not reclaim the free space.

After i empty trash (the secure empty doesn't work either), the system does not reclaim the free space.
I need to run the erase free space option from the disk utility every time...which is really annoying and time consuming.
Any ideas how to solve this?
Thanks in advance =)

There is a thing in iPhoto whereby the first time you delete a photo it asks if you want to delete or just remove from the album, something like that. Unfortunately it is one of these things with a "don't ask me again" checkbox. Now, "deleting" photos only removes them from the album they are in. To actually trash them I must then go to "all photos" and find them, to send them to the trash. To help find them, what I do is rename them zzz or something, so sorting them will get them to the bottom of my collection. Just maybe your photos are still lurking around?

I cannot delete a file from the document folder. I can move it to the trash and then empty the trash, but when I go back to the documents folder it is still there.

I cannot delete a file from the documents folder. I can move it to the trash and then empty it, but when I go back to the documents folder, the file is still there.

Gay,
I wonder what your computing environment is. Is your account being administrated by another account? Are you working in an account subject to "Parental Controls"?
Jerry

How do i view photos in iPhoto trash before i empty trash?

How do i view photos in iphoto trash before I empty it?

Click on the trash icon in the iPhoto Window

My trash can shows empty and other issues with it...

Ok basically, if i delete anything on my mac it should go to my trash can right?
Well i have a few problems with that as follows:
1. Everytime i delete something or move something to the trash it asks me to enter my password everytime, then deletes it, this never used to happen and now all of a sudden it does, this started just before the latest lion update and ive tried everything i know to stop it doing it but failed.
2. When i do delete something, the trash can shows empty on my desktop, and when i open the trash there is nothing inside, so im not able to restore anything if required, so basically if i move anything to trash it just gets permanently deleted instead of storing it in trash first, again this started just before the latest lion update.
I was hoping the update would fix this issue but didnt change it what so ever, i have also tried repairing disk permissions and still no change.
Any ideas on what i can do to fix these problems? Im still new to mac so i dont know all the ins and outs, but any help on this would be appreciated.
Cheers all,
Carl

Boot from your recovery partition by holding down the key combination command-R at startup. Release the keys when you see a gray screen with a spinning dial.
When the recovery desktop appears, select Utilities ▹ Terminal from the menu bar.
In the Terminal window, enter “resetpassword” (without the quotes) and press return. A Reset Password window opens.
Select your boot volume if not already selected.
Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.
Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button.
Select  ▹ Restart from the menu bar.

My trash refuses to empty. I'm running Mac OS X 10.7.3.

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