Can't empty trash?

Whenever I try emptying the trash, I get a message saying "The operation cannot be completed because the item 'wmphelp.htm' is locked." and it has stop or continue.. If I hit continue, it comes up with another item like "Wmpicon.gif" and so on and so one..It never leaves.

Any ideas, because I need to empty some of the stuff in my trash.

Go into the files in your trash that have padlocks on them, when you highlight the icon press "apple" and "I" on your keyboard to bring up the info, there should be something that says locked which is checked, uncheck it then you can delete it.

The thing is I can't see the item in my trash

Then it must be a hidden file which you can't view on macs

So how do I get rid of it?

I know I deleted stuff off of my usb thumb drive that I had plugged into a PC at school... So I guess that's why then?

What is it you are deleting exactly?

Select 'Finder' from the menu bar, and click 'Secure empty trash'

That normally works for me...

Secure Empty trash still doesn't allow me to delete it.

I'm just deleting like files I don't need like some work I did for school that I transferred over to my mac mini

Since you seemed to have missed the sticky at the top of this forum, allow me to move this to the correct place.

control+shift+option+delete
that should delete everything in your trash can with no need to run around unlocking files. just make sure you really want to delete them becore y ou do this because it just deletes wihtout asking

Still not working...

Close all of your programs and reboot. Then empty trash before opening anything.

Still getting the same error

ive narrowed it down to windows media player... and I have two copies of it in my trash... It was on my thumb drive.. maybe if I plug the thumb drive back in I can delete it?

shouldnt make a difference but it is worth a shot!

it didnt work... it just added more windows media players to my folder... I deleted everything except that... since its an intel mac, it automatically locks it? (bc WMP doesnt support intels yet?)

still not working

Honestly no clue. You may just have to reinstall the OS unless you can provide more information about what you did before this happened?

Open Terminal and type:

cd .. and hit Return.

Those are two periods.

Now type:

cd .Trash and hit Return.

Now type:

ls

That's "L", "S". Then hit Return one more time and post back what you see.