Why won't my trash empty?

I have files in my trash, and every time I try to empty my trash, it'll make the sound but the files will still be there. Is there something wrong with my computer???

I had a similar problem and tried the following without effect:
- Restarted the computer and tried again (twice).
- Held down Option while emptying.
- Opened the trash folder and tried a secure delete.
- Downloaded "Trash-It!" and ran it.
Finally, I ran Disk Utility from a restart (holding down Cmd and R key during the restart until Disk Utility came up). Repair disk found bad files and fixed them.  Now trash works fine.
So far, no other problems.

Similar Messages

  • Why won't my trash empty or show that it is empty?

    HI!
    I deleted a lot of files from my external drive then Trash deleted some of them but not all. I'm trying to Empty Securely Trash but it says: "The operation can’t be completed because you don’t have permission to access some of the items."
    I tried to press the option key and then Empty Securely Trash but it didn't work.
    When I log into my administration account and insert the external drive then it shows that Trash is empty but when I use my usual users account and insert the external drive then it shows that there are items in the trash but it won't let me Empty the Trash.
    Otherwise both my admistration account trash and usual users account trash are both empty, Its only when I use my usual users account and insert external drive then it shows items in the Trash and won't let me Empty it.
    So now I don't know if there are actually items in the Trash that I can't delete or the Trash is actually empty but for some reason it show that it is not and won't let me Empty it.
    Tried restarting computer multiple times but still nothing.
    Help!

    Unfortunately don't have any other macs around here.
    When I did Disk Utility then only Verify Disk and Repair Disk buttons are active. Verify Disk Permissions and Repair Disk Permissions buttons are not active at all. Don't know why is that. I assumed that they werent supposed to be active  with external harddrives as my other external harddrive which seems to be ok, when I mount it, then last 2 buttons I metioned also are not active. But if you say to use Repair Disk Permissions then something must be wrong with both of my external harddrives?
    Anyway the external drive which Im concerned with right now  (the trash won't empty), when I did Verify Disk and Repair Disk then got this:
    Verifying volume “MY PASSPORT”
    ** /dev/disk1s1
    ** Phase 1 - Preparing FAT
    ** Phase 2 - Checking Directories
    ** Phase 3 - Checking for Orphan Clusters
    10158 files, 132201376 KiB free (4131293 clusters)
    Verify and Repair volume “MY PASSPORT”
    Error: Could not unmount disk
    Verifying volume “MY PASSPORT”
    ** /dev/disk1s1
    ** Phase 1 - Preparing FAT
    ** Phase 2 - Checking Directories
    ** Phase 3 - Checking for Orphan Clusters
    10156 files, 132201472 KiB free (4131296 clusters)
    Verify and Repair volume “MY PASSPORT”
    Error: Could not unmount disk

  • Why won't my Trash empty everything but an HP Folder?

    It wil empty everything else in it except the HP folder.  I don't even know how it got into the Trash..it must have been a mistake.

    Repair permissions, restart your computer and empty the trash.  If that does not work, hold down the option key & empty the trash.  Try Secure Empty trash from the Finder menu. 

  • Why won't my TRASH empty securely and completely?

    I have tried several times to dump my trash.  The message comes up to empty all or just unlocked items.  I select the all option and it begins to empty the trash bin.  But soon after starting, the trash -------- bar showing how many trash items have been emptied shuts down.  When I go back to check the trash bin, there is still a lot of trash that hasn't been dumped.  How do I fix my trash bin so it empties everything out?
    dgsmeall is puzzled!

    Log out and back in (or reboot) then try emptying again.
    If that doesn't work try Trash It!.

  • Why doesn't iphoto trash empty

    I am trying to empty my photos from the iPhoto 11 trash and they will not empty.  What do I do?

    Then it's likely that trying to trash that number of photos has corrupted the Library.
    Option 1
    Back Up and try rebuild the library: hold down the command and option (or alt) keys while launching iPhoto. Use the resulting dialogue to rebuild. Choose to Repair Database. If that doesn't help, then try again, this time using Rebuild Database.
    If that fails:
    Option 2
    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

  • Why won't my Trash folder sync?

    I’ve got an iPhone 3G and use it with my employer’s MS Outlook 2003. The problem I’m having is that the Trash folder won’t sync – it hasn’t sync’d since 19th Jan (no idea of anything significant that happened that day). All of my other folders sync fine.
    When I go into the folder it tries to sync:
    - It says “Connecting ...” at the bottom of the screen
    - I then get an error message saying “Cannot Get Mail. The connection to the server failed”
    Any ideas?
    Jedzi

    My Trash folder also does not sync with my Exchange Mail.
    Every other function of the iPhone works with no issues.
    Company uses Exchange 2003. I checked with a co-worker who has the same iPhone firmware (2.2.1) and is also on the same exchange server as I am. He does not have the same issue.
    My issue is not as extreme as the others, my Trash just began to have the sync issue about 2 weeks ago, on March 26th.
    I have tried keeping the phone powered off for 1 hour to see if that would reset it, with no luck.
    Will restore the phone if no solution is available in the next couple days. If I do a restore I will post back and let you know how it .
    EDIT: A few other things I tried just now with no luck, deleted and then re-entered my password in the Mail settings.
    Also tried to change the amount of messages the phone syncs (from 200 to 50, then back to 200).
    Turned on WiFi and tried to sync, then turned off WiFi and attempted a sync again.
    Changed Fetch settings from manual to 15 minutes, then back to manual again.
    Created a folder called "Test" in my mailbox through Outlook Web Access, moved a message from my Inbox to "Test"....checked my iPhone and it had no problems syncing the message in "Test" Moved the item into Deleted Items via OWA, then checked iPhone Trash and it still cannot sync, same error message.
    Message was edited by: SleeveOfWizard

  • IPhoto won't quit! Empty trash with 8000 +....

    Cleaned up iPhoto, deleting, now have 8000+ images in iPhoto trash. Click iPhoto Trash>Empty Trash, and separate upper right "Empty Trash" button... neither one will dump all these photos.... And the program freezes with swirling after the box shows it is emptying iPhoto trash.... NOT. Please help, after many tries this is becoming ugly.

    Hello Old Toad:
    Thank you for your suggestion. I've seen it in other discussions.
    I've been using iPhoto for many years. I've been using a 2 GHz Intel Core Duo 2007 era iMac the whole time. I'm now using iPhoto v8.1.2.
    My iPhoto library is now quite large with about 40,000 photos and about 175 G in total size. I have put a lot of time into organizing the photos. Everything is religiously backed up.
    Over the past year or so the performance of iPhoto in terms of speed has been slowly declining. It takes a long time to open, but the most cumbersome is the spinning beach ball when I "commit" to enhancements to a photo I've made (contrast, saturation, sharpness etc). Recently that beach ball could actually take 3-5 minutes. I find this intolerable.
    So I started researching this to see if others have the problem. As best I can make out after a few hours of research is that my library is too large and my computer too old. I don't want to replace my computer becuase of iPhoto so I started researching the idea of splitting my library into smaller libraries.
    I found several 3rd party programs (iPhoto Buddy, iPhoto Library Manager) that made it seem they may be able to help me easily split my library into several libraries. Unfortunately neither actually does this but instead tells you how you need to do that manually.
    The methods to split your library manually they suggest are horrendously tedious for a 40,000 photo library with over 1,000 carefully constructed Events.
    And this brings me to where I stand today. I copy my entire library to an external hard drive, open the copied library and what I WANT to do is prune it to say 1/10 of the size (say two years of my photos). (Realize I'll have to do this process of copying my entire library 10 times, and pruning each time.)
    But then I find out that iPhoto totally chokes when you try to trash more than "80-100" photos at a time! Morever, I come to find out that emptying the trash of even 80 photos takes 3-5 minutes!
    Although I appreciate the help and advice, perhaps you can understand my frustration with Apple. I'm literally an indentured servant to iPhoto if I want to preserve all the work I've done on my library. I'd switch to another program if it would preserve all my events but I can not find one that does.
    1. The performance of their software declines with no warning to the point where it can't be used unless you're unemployed and have nothing else to do.
    2. You look for a fix and find you have to split your library.
    3. When you try to split your library you find it will takes days and days of tedious work to complete.
    So that is my story. That is why I'm so angry with Apple.
    Have I missed anything or am I doomed to this dreary work?
    Thank you for any help and guidance you can provide.

  • I backed up then erased 118 gigs worth of photos, but my storage still says I'm full.  I emptied the trash and rebooted but my computer won't recognize the empty space.  What gives?

    I backed up then erased 118 gigs worth of photos, but my storage still says I'm full.  I emptied the trash and rebooted, but my computer won't recognize the empty space.  What gives?  I erased all my iPhoto pictures from the pictures folder in Finder so I could restore a backup from my Time Capsule.  When I try to restore the library, I get a message that there's not enough room on my computer to restore.  I have a Macbook Pro with 250 gig hard drive.  I would greatly appreciate some help.  Thanks!

    If you're trying to add a large amount of data all at once, and you get an alert of insufficient space, then from the menu bar, select
               ▹ System Preferences... ▹ Time Machine
    If the padlock icon is closed, click it to unlock the settings and authenticate. Turn Time Machine OFF, then back ON and close the preference pane. Restart the computer. Test.

  • Getting error code 8003 when trying to empty trash, lots and lots of stuff in there but it won't let me empty the trash.

    getting error code 8003 when trying to empty trash, lots and lots of stuff in there but it won't let me empty the trash.

    Thomas...
    Try Trash IT for Mac >  http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/8214/trash-it!
    It helped users with the same issue here >   https://discussions.apple.com/message/16995454#16995454

  • Why won't some of my songs, that used to sync, sync to my iPhone 5 now? There is an empty circle appearing to the left of the check marks for each of the songs that were not successfully synced.

    Why won't some of my songs, that used to sync, sync to my iPhone5 now? There is an empty circle appearing to the left of the check mark in iTunes for the songs that are not properly syncing.

    I've continued tests on different films, and tried my entire collection. I've found about two dozen that will play fine on the PC, but will not cooperate when streamed to either Apple TV or my iPad. I tried several more tests with the audio, and that turned out not to be a factor -- I could not replicate that on another test.
    I wonder if something in the header of these files is corrupted or a flag is set incorrectly or something along those lines, as the data appears to be fine -- it's just not "handshaking" with my streaming hardware and/or the Apple Home Sharing code that powers it.
    Is there any way for me to "scrub" these files and amend their headers, or get into the file and tinker with that info by hand?

  • Why isn't storage increased if a film has been deleted and trash emptied?

    Why isn't storage increased if a video has been deleted and trash emptied?

    This is very strange. Here are two screen shots from my computer, before and after deleting a 14 gB folder. Notice that the number in Used: is 14 gB less, as it should be. What numbers are you comparing?

  • Trash won't open or empty through dock

    As the topic says, my trash won't open or empty using the right-click menu in the dock. However, it will if I use the finder menu option, and the dock icon will update iteself. (Mac OS 10.7.1)
    I can't think of anything short of an OS bug or a messed up process. Logging out, restarting...the issue always comes back AFTER A WHILE.
    Any ideas?

    http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/trash.html

  • Why won't my printer (Brother HL2270DW) print out Elements User bi-monthly magazine?  Screen says PDF format not supported or printer not connected (it is) or shows an empty screen.  No other printing problems on any website.

    Why won't my printer (Brother HL2270DW) print out Elements bi-monthly magazine.  Screen says either printed not connected (not true) or PDF not supported of shows a blank document.  No problems printing on any other website.

    My daughter has had her Razr for about 9 months now.  About two weeks ago she picked up her phone in the morning on her way to school when she noticed two cracks, both starting at the camera lens. One goes completely to the bottom and the other goes sharply to the side. She has never dropped it and me and my husband went over it with a fine tooth comb. We looked under a magnifying glass and could no find any reason for the glass to crack. Not one ding, scratch or bang. Our daughter really takes good care of her stuff, but we still wanted to make sure before we sent it in for repairs. Well we did and we got a reply from Motorola with a picture of the cracks saying this was customer abuse and that it is not covered under warranty. Even though they did not find any physical damage to back it up. Well I e-mailed them back and told them I did a little research and found pages of people having the same problems. Well I did not hear from them until I received a notice from Fed Ex that they were sending the phone back. NOT FIXED!!! I went to look up why and guess what there is no case open any more for the phone. It has been wiped clean. I put in the RMA # it comes back not found, I put in the ID #, the SN# and all comes back not found. Yet a day earlier all the info was there. I know there is a lot more people like me and all of you, but they just don't want to be bothered so they pay to have it fix, just to have it do it again. Unless they have found the problem and only fixing it on a customer pay only set up. I am furious and will not be recommending this phone to anyone. And to think I was considering this phone for my next up grade! NOT!!!!

  • Why won't Adobe reader no longer let me view previously download (from Safari) pdf's? I am running OSX 10.8.5 and have uninstalled and reinstalled latest version of Reader?

    Why won't Adobe reader no longer let me view previously download (from Safari) pdf's? I am running OSX 10.8.5 and have uninstalled and reinstalled latest version of Reader. I get this error message "Adobe Reader could not open 'OD Test Bed Proposals_0.pdf' because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged (for example, it was sent as an email attachment and wasn't correctly decoded)."  I have tried changing the 'open with' options too. Thanks

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  • Why won't my Mac, with Mountain Lion installed boot up?

    I had problems getting my Mac to boot so I made a Genius Bar appointment at my local Apple Store.  The ran some tests and discovered a "disk i/o" error which they said indicated that my hard drive needed replacing.  Hard drive replaced, brought it home, restarted, set up, Disk Utility run (permission checks out, disk checks out), Time Machine back up loaded and still all I get is the grey screen with the apple logo and the spinning wheel (not beach ball).  Why won't it boot up?  Any ideas???

    Take each of these steps that you haven't already tried. Stop when the problem is resolved.
    Step 1
    The first step in dealing with a boot failure is to secure your data. If you want to preserve the contents of the startup drive, and you don't already have at least one current backup, you must try to back up now, before you do anything else. It may or may not be possible. If you don't care about the data that has changed since your last backup, you can skip this step.   
    There are several ways to back up a Mac that is unable to boot. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.a. Boot into Recovery by holding down the key combination command-R at the startup chime, or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) Release the keys when you see a gray screen with a spinning dial. When the OS X Utilities screen appears, launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in this support article, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.”
    b. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, boot the non-working Mac in target disk mode by holding down the key combination command-T at the startup chime. Connect the two Macs with a FireWire or Thunderbolt cable. The internal drive of the machine running in target mode will mount as an external drive on the other machine. Copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
    c. If the internal drive of the non-working Mac is user-replaceable, remove it and mount it in an external enclosure or drive dock. Use another Mac to copy the data.
    Step 2
    Press and hold the power button until the power shuts off. Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed to boot, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Use a different keyboard and/or mouse, if those devices are wired. If you can boot now, one of the devices you disconnected, or a combination of them, is causing the problem. Finding out which one is a process of elimination.
    If you've booted from an external storage device, make sure that your internal boot volume is selected in the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences.
    Step 3
    Boot in safe mode. Note: If FileVault is enabled, or if a firmware password is set, or if the boot volume is a software RAID, you can’t do this. Post for further instructions.
    Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including wireless networking on certain Macs.
    The login screen appears even if you usually log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
    When you boot in safe mode, it's normal to see a dark gray progress bar on a light gray background. If the progress bar gets stuck for more than a few minutes, or if the system shuts down automatically while the progress bar is displayed, your boot volume is damaged and the drive is probably malfunctioning. In that case, go to step 5.
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    If the boot process hangs again, the problem is likely caused by a third-party system modification that you installed. Post for further instructions.
    Step 4
    Sometimes a boot failure can be resolved by resetting the NVRAM.
    Step 5
    Launch Disk Utility in Recovery mode (see Step 1.) Select your startup volume, then run Repair Disk. If any problems are found, repeat until clear. If Disk Utility reports that the volume can't be repaired, the drive has malfunctioned and should be replaced. You might choose to tolerate one such malfunction in the life of the drive. In that case, erase the volume and restore from a backup. If the same thing ever happens again, replace the drive immediately.
    This is one of the rare situations in which you should also run Repair Permissions, ignoring the false warnings it may produce. Look for the line "Permissions repair complete" at the end of the output. Then reboot as usual.
    Step 6
    Boot into Recovery again. When the OS X Utilities screen appears, follow the prompts to reinstall the OS. If your Mac was upgraded from an older version of OS X, you’ll need the Apple ID and password you used to upgrade.
    Note: You need an always-on Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection to the Internet to use Recovery. It won’t work with USB or PPPoE modems, or with proxy servers, or with networks that require a certificate for authentication.
    Step 7
    Repeat step 6, but this time erase the boot volume in Disk Utility before installing. The system should automatically reboot into the Setup Assistant. Follow the prompts to transfer your data from a backup.
    Step 8
    A dead logic-board battery in a Mac Pro can cause a gray screen at boot. Typically the boot failure will be preceded by loss of the startup disk and system clock settings. See the user manual for replacement instructions.
    Step 9
    If you get this far, you're probably dealing with a hardware fault. Make a "Genius" appointment at an Apple Store to have the machine tested.

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