Morning all ,noy being a Mac man I have a question for the Genius's here a client of mine has a lot ofile in his recycle/trash bin ,
they are all showing a padlock on the icon ,he want's to delete them but his normal method dosent work he tells me he cant delete the Locked items ,
any Idea's ,thanx for looking .

Okay, first thing to try is to choose "Secure Empty Trash" from the Finder menu.

If that doesn't work, drag the locked items from the bin to the desktop. Select one and choose File > Get Info...

In the panel check for a padlock and click it to unlock it, then you can try to delete the file again.

Hope that helps.

Thanks Heather Ill try that and get back to you .

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1526

Is he the only user, is his normal account set up as administrator?

I guess the files belong to somebody else... The above link might shed some light on the subject.

Also a little utility to delete locked files on CNet clicky

A slightly more industrial approach would be to open up the Terminal app located in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal
And type the following (as long as the user deleted the stuff from the local hard drive and not a USB/firewire drive)

At this point you should see all the files being listed on the screen. If the folder "501" didn't exist, just go into the other only folder that is there.

Carry on with the following:


This will set permissions so anyone can modify them, then delete everything.

yes he is the only user and not too techy ,It appears he is scanning 20/30 thousand aerial photos and then when he has transferred them to his ext drive he is trying to delete them .

more later if i have time .thnx all of you .

Holding the option key while clicking on Empty Trash works for me when deleting locked files as in the Apple document that has been linked.