I am unable to empty two items in Trash

Question

Level 1

8 points

I am unable to empty two items in Trash

There are two folders in Trash that won't empty. The error message says they are in use. Two are folders, and the other two items are referred to as "share" and "usr". I have followed every suggestion I can find in various discussion groups, and nothing works so far.

I also tried to start my MacPro in Safe Mode, but was unsuccessful. Despite holding the Shift key down until the sign-in page appeared, the boot is always shown as "normal".

Mac Pro (Late 2013), macOS High Sierra (10.13.4)

Posted on May 25, 2018 5:28 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Grant Bennet-Alder

Level 10

127,177 points

May 25, 2018 8:34 PM in response to StoneZone

usr directory is part of the beating heart of MacOS kernel. If you ever manage to delete that folder, your Mac will stop working entirely.

I have 31 different folder named share on my Mac, and all are deep inside structured Applications.

How did these get in the Trash?

Reply

Answer 2

StoneZone Author

Level 1

8 points

May 25, 2018 8:29 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I was reorganizing a lot of wedding photo backups into a couple of external hard drives, copying some from the Mac Pro HD. When I deleted the unwanted ones from the Mac everything but the two files and those items called usr and share. I can't see them in Trash, but they are there. Any suggestions on how to get them out?

The path for the first is Trash > bad file 1 > Mac Pro HD > Library > Preferences > SystemConfiguration, and for the second is Trash > bad file 2 > and then the same as the path for bad file 1.

Reply

Answer 3

StoneZone Author

Level 1

8 points

May 25, 2018 8:33 PM in response to StoneZone

Everything but the remaining ones was emptied.

I see numbers briefly flashing by as I select Skip from the options on the undeletable items. They look like 16 and 32, but I'm not sure. When I Skip the bad file 1 and bad file 2 items no such numbers show up.

Reply

I am unable to empty two items in Trash

Similar questions