Trash Bin Problem ><

Hi, I have a macbook pro 10.6.2 snow leopard. This is my first mac and somewhere along the way of messing with this new computer, I'm guessing I enabled some option that prevents me from using the trash bin. Whenever I delete a file (such as word docs/jpegs/pdf) it permanently deletes the file instead of going in the the trash bin.

I have set up bootcamp: Windows XP, I'm not sure if this contributes to the problem I'm having. Any help would be appreciated, and I'm assuming this is a very newbie problem but it is my first mac so please help the newbie! Thanks!

How are you deleting items?....
The option is moving an item to trash, and then emptying the trash.
Are you saying that if you right click (control click) an item and select move to trash, or you drag an item to the trash that it empties the trash without you taking that step?

weather I drag the file into the trash bin or right click and choose "move to trash," I get a warning message saying:
"Are you sure you want to delete "filename"? This item will be deleted immediately. You can't undo this action"

So basically, I can no longer empty the trash bin because it never gets used. It used to work when I first bought this mac. I'm thinking it might have been something to do with the extra partition I made for the Windows XP but I'm not sure and I have no idea how to fix it. I deleted the partition hoping it would fix it, but it didn't.

Sounds like the permissions on the .Trash folder have changed. I've had this happen before and I found out that somehow the permissions had changed so that my user only had read permissions. Here is how you can check to see if you have read only permissions.

1. Open up Terminal (/Applications/Utilities), paste the following and press enter: 2. Paste the following into the Terminal and hit enter: 3. Open up Finder, find the .Trash folder in your home directory.
4. Right click the .Trash folder and select "Get Info".
5. Under "Sharing & Permissions", what does it say under the "Privilege" column for your username? If it says "Read only", change it to "Read & Write".
6. Close the info window.

To go back to the way things were before, execute the following in a Terminal window: After that, execute the following again:

Nice one Vansmith, I'm not good with terminal and while you wrote that response, I was trying to work out the command lines to show the trash folder. You saved me from getting frazzled trying to work it out

Thanks for the help, would have never got this far without it.
Okay here is a screen shot of the .trash "get info"

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v295/nrkht/pictures/Screenshot2010-01-10at72827PM.png

I see users: "System" which I assume is me, and "everyone" which I'm assuming is shared network. It says read and write for "system." I haven't changed anything and this was the setting it was at >< I shouldn't change the "everybody's" settings right?

Since there is no user and only a choice of system and everyone.... Change it to read and write for everyone and see if that fixes it (you can always change it back and it will do no harm)

yeh i just thought of that and tried, but it's not even letting me edit anything. I can't enable or disable anything. It's as if I'm not the administrator, but I'm the only user on this computer ><

oohhh, never mind, i had to unlock it using my password! another newbie mistake. But I added the administrator to this list with read and write and now it works perfectly! Thanks a bunch guys! really appreciate it. Now can you tell me how I give you guys rep points for helping me? Lol

Glad you got it sorted, as I checked mine and I it had me as user and everyone as choice, so I could see that you had no admin rights on it.
Anyway, I don't deserve rep points on this one, but Vansmith certainly does
It's next to the red dot under his details (and be sure to leave your name so he knows who the appreciation is from)

Glad to hear it's all sorted out.

You should be able to add yourself to that list though if you click the plus sign in the bottom left hand corner. If you can, I would add yourself, give yourself read & write privileges and give "everyone" no access. I know that sounds weird but that's how it's set on mine and everything works well here (I believe "everyone" has always been set at "no access" as well).

EDIT: Never mind, it looks like you added your user to that list already.

Just rebooting the computer solved the problem.

Thank you for your answers.