Trash wont empty

[pyote5]

Im getting pretty fed up with my mac's trash bin> I try and empty it and it tells me the item is in use but for the life of me I cant see how that can be because it clearly is NOT. Following some forumn advice I held down option and clicked secure empty trash....which frooze so I clicked stop emptying trash and it remained frozen and nothing I could do would budge it. Attempt at restarting told me "Applications are in use"
So I held down the power button and rebooted and was able to empty the trash.

This is my problem I need help.
Although actually Im new to macs so theres a bunch of things getting on my nerves like why am I being told that my 230GB hard disk is full when theres 50GB of free space. Im also currently trying to figure out what the heck is taking up the other 170GB. Surely I cant be using all that.

I still love my MAC but GOD its a rough transition. And then these dmg files I dont get it. Somtimes a dmg file contains an installer and somtimes it just contains the application. So If I install it can I delete the dmg file.
Advice appreciated .

Angrily yours
Pyote5

 

[AppleCider]

Hm... The trash thing has happened to me before. I just restarted and it worked. As for the harddrive space disappearing, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Lion actually backs up your harddrive on your hard drive when you dont have a timemachine backup . Not sure how to fix that though, its called vault or somfink.

 

[Dysfunction]

Here's how to disable local backups.

Disable Time Machine Local Backups in Mac OS X Lion

 

[AppleCider]

Careful with Sudo commands, one wrong letter could lead to disaster.

We had someone start a thread about his computer not starting up. He followed some random thingy from the internet, and put in a sudo command that wiped his drive clean. Always double check your spelling, and make sure you know what the commands do.

 

[Dysfunction]

This is true, it's also probably useful to check the storage usage to see if this is even the issue.. for instance, on my machine.. with time machine completely disabled...

You see nothing in 'backups'. To get there.. click on the apple, then on About this Mac, then on More info, then on Storage

 

[AppleCider]

You could also try and move the offending file to a flashdrive, and deleting it on another computer.

 

[Dysfunction]

btw, you can easily find what apps are using a file... for instance... let me go find one...

so I opened the users manual for my old FM2... it's a pdf...

Opened terminal and used lsof (LiSt Open Files)

mikeMBP:~ mike$ lsof |grep -i fm2
Preview 6026 mike txt REG 14,2 13152889 283746 /Users/mike/Documents/Manuals/camera/FM2.pdf
mikeMBP:~ mike$

Ohhh and it's preview! Now, knowing this I could kill the pid of preview, close the app.. etc then delete the file without issue.. generally.