NUL file in Trash won't go away

I just started having this problem today as well!

File is called '␀␀␀õ␀␀.␀␀' where the diagonals say NUL.

I don't know if this was a file that didn't delete properly or if Leopard is making random files up.

Welcome to Apple Discussions!!

The NUL characters are illegal in filenames, so most of the software, including Finder and Terminal, can't handle them.

However, Disk Utility's Repair Disk option has, since 10.4.x, often been able to fix these. To run this you need to start up from the Instal Disc and choose Disk Utility from the Installer Menu/Utilities. Choose the "First Aid" tab, and click the Repair Disk button. If it reports that it fixed some errors, run it again until it says there are no errors.

Alternatively you could try a Safe Boot, which will automatically run the disk checking and repair routines: Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode.

Post back to let us whether this clears the problem.

I also have this problem. I tried running disc utility and repair but to no avail. I do however have a boot camp partition with XP and have run parallels off this partition. This item appeared shortly after installing these items. I wonder if it is possibly on the other partition. Can I run disc utility and repair on the other volume without compromising my windows side? I wouldn't want to repair special characters for mac and discover my Windows side needs said characters!

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

J

Welcome to Apple Discussions!!

I wonder if it is possibly on the other partition.

Maybe—I hadn't thought about that, since the other two posters didn't mention Boot Camp or Parallels. Don't try and run Disk Utility though.

Let's see if we can find this file in Terminal, but first empty everything you can from your Trash (if you're not ready to completely get rid of anything, move it to a "junk" folder instead).

Then, open the Terminal (from /Applications/Utilities) and copy and paste the following into the Terminal window, one line at a time, with a return after each line:

ls -aOlR .Trash
ls -aOlR /Volumes/*/.Trashes

Copy and paste the all the results from the Terminal window, including the commands, to a post here.

Thanks for the suggestion. Here's the information from Terminal.

Last login: Tue Dec 18 11:49:46 on ttys000
S01060016360c0be1:~ jamesmark$ ls -aOlR .Trash
total 0
drwx------ 2 jamesmark jamesmark - 68 18 Dec 10:52 .
drwxr-xr-x+ 19 jamesmark jamesmark - 646 18 Dec 10:52 ..
S01060016360c0be1:~ jamesmark$ ls -aOlR /Volumes/*/.Trashes
/Volumes/Macintosh HD/.Trashes:
ls: .Trashes: Permission denied

/Volumes/WINDOWS/.Trashes:
total 128
drwxrwxrwx@ 1 jamesmark jamesmark hidden 16384 13 Dec 09:35 .
drwxrwxrwx 1 jamesmark jamesmark - 16384 18 Dec 10:52 ..
-rwxrwxrwx 1 jamesmark jamesmark hidden 4096 13 Dec 09:35 ._501
drwxrwxrwx 1 jamesmark jamesmark - 16384 31 Dec 1969 501

/Volumes/WINDOWS/.Trashes/501:
ls: \004␀␀␀õ\001␀␀.õ\001␀: File name too long
S01060016360c0be1:~ jamesmark$

It appears the file in the trash is a file from the Windows side of my computer! (**** windows!!!) I suspected this, but still don't know how to remove this file. Suggestions?

J

Sadly, I don't think you will be able to remove this file using OS X, except possibly by using Disk Utility's Repair Disk function. But I would not like to recommend that, since I don't know what else might be affected, not having Boot Camp or Parallels installed myself.

I don't even know if you would be able to delete this from Windows, but that might be worth exploring.

Hi. I think you'll find my (answered) thread very helpful. If you have Windows and one of your drives is FAT32, then you should check it for .Trash, or is it .Trashes? Anyway, you'll need to be able to see hidden files. For me, the strange file appeared in Trashes/501, and after I deleted it, Trash was empty.

I hope you'll be able to solve the problem the same way I have, because I know how incredibly distracting it was to me.

* http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5827887*
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1293891&tstart=0

Thank you SO much everyone for all your help! Running Checkdisk in Windows did the trick!

Awesome!

That was like having an itch I couldn't scratch!

J