Trash Bin gone?

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Level 1

110 points

Trash Bin gone?

I have a client (very old woman) who has somehow made her Finder Trash Bin disappear. Two questions:

1) How might she have done this?

2) How does one get it back without an archive and reinstall?

Disk Permissions were repaired, but no other repairs were attempted by the guy I sent to help her with other things that day.

much obliged,

Mick

MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 233mghz & a G5 dual 2GHz, Mac OS X (10.4.8), Airport Base Stations N and G, and lotsa external devices...

Posted on Feb 25, 2007 10:42 AM

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Answer 1

macjack

Level 10

111,242 points

Feb 25, 2007 10:52 AM in response to MickGuinn

Hi Mick,

1. Who knows?

2. This should rebuild it:

Go to /Applications /Utilities/Terminal and launch it.
At the prompt, copy and paste this command

sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash

Press Return.
You will be asked to enter your admin password. It will be invisible.
Enter it and press Return.
Log out and back in or restart.

Let us know.

-mj
macjack@gmail.com

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Answer 2

MickGuinn Author

Level 1

110 points

Feb 25, 2007 10:56 AM in response to macjack

Hey MJ,

Thanks for the very speedy reply!

couple points below:

Hi Mick,

1. Who knows?

Have you ever heard of this? She's wicked with a mouse and has launched commands I've never seen before. I finally sent one of my guys to work with her on some ultra remedial techniques, and he was the one who spotted it.

It would be helpful to know how this can happen if anyone else can postulate. It's an otherwise totally up to date and well maintained MacBook that's barely 3 mos. old.

2. This should rebuild it:

Go to /Applications /Utilities/Terminal and launch
it.
At the prompt, copy and paste this command

sudo rm -rf ~/.Trash

Press Return.
You will be asked to enter your admin password. It
will be invisible.
Enter it and press Return.
Log out and back in or restart.

Thank you for this. I'll try it the next time we're out there and see how it works. I figured there was something Terminal could do.

Let me know if you have any other theories about how this happened so I can prevent it from doing so in the future.

cheers,

Mick

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