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Level 5

5,556 points

OS trashed boot.efi but won't let me empty it

I recently had to restore my system from TM Backup. After the restore, there's an old backup TM file in the trash which I can't remove. The principle reason I can't remove it is there's boot.efi file in there which is locked. Here's what I've tried

1. Changing the permission to read & write in the Get Info window.

This has no effect because the Locked option remains greyed out even after unlocking the permissions.

2. I've tried the advice given here: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1402

The commands aren't accepted in Lion

3. sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash

Doesn't have any effect

4. From an earlier (2008) post about this problem, it was suggesed by Kappy to try advice from this site: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/trash.html

Their advice basically ends up advising one of the first three things I tried.

Any other suggestions? Ten points for the winning postcard.. 🙂

MacBook Pro 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.7), 4GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Posted on Sep 10, 2011 5:18 AM

50 replies

Mar 4, 2013 4:09 AM in response to GRUser

Glad it worked for you, GRUser. What softwater recommended should work under normal circumstances, but sometimes things aren't normal :-) BTW, I'm running the latest version of ML as well.

Trialk

Level 1

10 points

Mar 5, 2013 12:27 PM in response to softwater

it took 3 attempts but it worked. 🙂 first time i had the TM off and nothing was in trash. then i turned it on and item came back to trash and when i redid it CORRECTLY the third time and drug the file out of trash in to the terminal window it has worked. Now if the pesky thing will just stay gone. softwater your method worked.

Mar 24, 2013 11:31 AM in response to softwater

Where did you ever find this Option-Empty solution?

e.silva

Level 1

0 points

May 1, 2013 6:07 AM in response to softwater

Hi I followed your instruction upto step 2 but I cant seem to get in to the trashes file in TM!
it says I dont have permission.

EfeCelik

Level 1

4 points

May 12, 2013 1:34 PM in response to softwater

I have followed your instructions (alt+Empty) but there is still a folder left containing boot.efi in my Trash Can. I rebooted my computer multiples times and deleted the folder the way you showed and it didn't worked.

Suggestions?

May 29, 2013 3:19 AM in response to softwater

The first solution didn't work but this one did the trick, thank you so much! It's been bugging me for a month!

Esco78

Level 1

0 points

Jun 27, 2013 8:24 AM in response to softwater

Great help, well explained. Thanks.

Jul 18, 2013 11:47 AM in response to softwater

Nice explanation Softwater! Very clear and it worked! Thank you.

Aug 12, 2013 7:45 PM in response to softwater

Perfect solution. All previous posts around the net failed. This worked fine. Jesus that was killing me!

Nov 14, 2013 12:54 AM in response to softwater

Thanks softwater. Your post stopped me from going prematurely grey!

Jan 12, 2014 5:39 AM in response to softwater

Step 2 is enough, but still need to unlock the file and empty from the TM drive.

Feb 15, 2014 9:19 AM in response to Larry McJunkin

All of the other suggestions did not put a dent into getting rid of the locked files in the trash. Trash It! did the job! Thank you!

Now, to figure out why some of the other simple function keys seem to not want to work right. I am even running Mavericks and the system seems to slow down something badly. That, however, will be left for another conversation at a later time.

Thank you, again!