Ghost Files On Mac Osx

Im very lost with this strange thing. I have some files and folders on my Mac OSX 10.4.8 that I trashed and still appear on my desktop or inside the folder. You can see the name of them but no icon, when I try to click tehm and drag them to the trash again, the icons dissapear and dont come back until you put another thing around and then it pops again.

I ve been doing all the maintenance with ONYX, erasing cache, rebooting, and practicually doing everything. Even I used Disk Utlility and verifying all permisions and the HD with no problem.

of course I ran virus detector, finding nothing.

Im a little worry I have back up everything, but I dont want to loose any files.

PLEASE HEEEELP!!!!

Thx
A.

Interesting ... try this:

Open Terminal (Applications/Utilities/Terminal) and type these commands:

cd Desktop
ls -a

See if anything shows up. If you've got nothing on your desktop there should be nothing in there. If there are things in there, do this:

rm -f <name of mystery file>

If there is nothing displayed there, I'm at a bit of a loss. Try going to Finder and your Home directory, then navigate to Library/Caches/Desktop and delete all the files in there (well, move them to the Trash) and restart Finder. You can do this by pressing command-option-escape, clicking 'Finder' in the list that appears and pressing the 'Relaunch' button.

We can help you more if you make a screenshot of the files and post it here.

There are certain files like .DS_Store which will be created by the system to store Windows position, Size, etc. If that case you don't have to worry at all.

did what you say and this is what I got:

rm: illegal option -- .
usage: rm [-f | -i] [-dPRrvW] file ...
unlink file

It appear a strange file without a name but with a long number

You likely are seeing hidden system files. Somehow you turned the viewing of hidden files on. Do the following to turn it off:
1. Open Terminal.
2. Type:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder
3. Finder will restart and the files should disapear.

I thank you for you answer, but now it is getting worse!!! Im loosing some mp3 files. In iTunes I see the files with an exclamation sign when I double click them the system says the files cannot be used because it cannot find the orginal file. AND IT IS NOT IN my HD!!! I did not deleted them!! or move them, what the heck is going on??

It sounds like you're suffering some serious file system corruption. Boot off your installation CD or DVD and when it starts, choose Disk Utility and run a scan on your hard disk.

I did that the HD is all right. It pass the test. Still lost!

You should buy Alsoft's DiskWarrior. It works wonders on big problems.