Can't empty trash

[petedist]

I went to empty my trash last week and it took most of the day, due to over 1million items? I can't imagine that much stuff in there, it was unsual and I don't believe that the volume was such.

Now, after the Mac finally emptied the trash. It won't empty anymore?

Says: error code -8003 Can complete operation?

Can anyone help?

Thanks so much.

john

 

[chas_m]

It sounds as though you put something in the trash that the system needs to operate.

Actually, it sounds like you put EVERYTHING in the trash that the system needs to operate.

My gut tells me that the next time you reboot the machine, you are going to have big problems.

 

[McBie]

John,
Do you have a backup of your system ?
You might need it .
Cheers ... McBie

 

[toMACsh]

I went to empty my trash last week and it took most of the day, due to over 1million items?

Wow! What OS do you have? If Snow Leopard, open your Trash, highlight items one at a time and pick Put Away from the menu or right click for that option. This will put things back where they were. Then you can very selectively delete things after making sure you don't need them.

 

[vansmith]

Well, if you've already deleted a lot of OS system files, you're out of luck. That said, I don't know if you can delete what's currently in use (in terms of memory) so you may have a chance to salvage some stuff depending on what was deleted and in what order. When you had the million files being deleted, did it delete everything or did it skip over some stuff? What have you put in the trash? Do you know what the names of some of those files were?

I'd love to be more clear as to whether you can delete OS files but I'm not exactly in the mood to test whether you can or not from the Trash bin. I know you can if you use rm and force it but I won't go down that road. On top of this, you would have had to enter your password at some point if they were OS system files so you should have been aware of what was going on.

 

[nuttiespice]

Well I wouldn't say that the files should be system files. This happened to me once with few picture files that just refused to get emptied from my trash. While toMacsh's idea sounds good, if you are sure that your trash contains only trash then use secure empty trash. That's what I did and I dint have any problems with booting or anything as such.