On Jul 4, 2012, at 8:06 PM, Macs R We wrote: > On Jul 4, 2012, at 3:49 PM, Dinse, Gregg (NIH/NIEHS) [V] wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> Often I try to empty the trash and I get a message that a file can't be >> deleted because the application that opened it is still in use (or something >> like that). Frequently the file is a PDF. In many cases, the Preview app >> is not even running, or if it is, I quit it, and still I can't empty the PDF >> from the trash. I am able to use the Terminal app to delete the file, but >> that's not as convenient. The file is owned by me and is not locked, so why >> can't I empty it from the trash? Thanks, > > Sometimes, the actual answer is "nothing," and the culprit is a damaged file > system. > > Right now I have a Time Machine backup drive that Time Machine won't do > backups to. It also won't unmount because "something" is using a file on it. > But OS X won't tell me what (because there IS nothing), and when I run Whats > Open, it tells me the same thing: nothing. So I run Disk Utility on it, and > it finds a few links and frobs to repair, after which it will unmount OR do > exactly one backup, and then it's back in this state. I tried DiskWarrior, > but it fails on this drive because it runs out of memory (the only drive DW > has ever punted for me). So I'm erasing it today and starting my backups > over. > > My suggestion is that you boot from another drive and run Disk Utility and/or > DiskWarrior over your boot drive to straighten out your problem.
Hi, I ran Disk Utility and it did not find anything. Hey, maybe that's a signal that something is wrong, since it usually finds something! :) I did not yet try booting from a different drive and running Disk Utility from there, so I will try that next. It's not like I never had this happen in the past, but it seems to be happening more often now. I recently upgraded both my Mac Pro at work and my Mac Pro at home to Lion, so I am wondering if it's related to that, since it seems to be happening more often on both machines. Thanks, Gregg _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
