Getting rid of a stubborn alias...

[twiggs462]

I have one problem that is driving me crazy and I am thanking in advance for any who can help…

O.K. I have the following setup:

PowerBook G4 800MHz
1024MB RAM
60GB HDD
Mobile Radeon 7500 32MB
OSX 10.2.2

O.K. Here is my minor problem I really would like to fix:

I had did a clean install of OS X installed all of my software and needed to do something in OS 9 for a few days for school. So I install OS 9… When I go to get rid of OS 9 I found that I couldn’t delete the folders the install created because the computer was saying that they were owned by root.

From this point I called Apple to ask them what to do and they told me that there is no easy way to uninstall OS 9 once installed. This is something I find hard to believe, because something can always be done…

I got on the phone with a supervisor and he told me to open up the terminal and use the following command to delete OS 9:

Sudo rm –r *

Where * is the directory I wish to delete from the Root. All I had to do was drag and drop the folders to the terminal window.

I did this and they all deleted.

Now the part that is bugging the hell out of me:

I restart my computer and in my hard drive is one of the items I deleted:

(alias) Desktop (Mac OS 9)

SO I did the terminal command to this item and it deleted again. But every time I turn my computer back on this item always comes back. Can someone please tell me how to get rid of this because the techs at apple don’t know how. I tried calling back again and they told me to reinstall OS X. Like it’s no big deal. There has got to be a way to get rid of this alias without doing that. Thanks for any help guys…

Peace
-Twiggs

 

[symphonix]

I think that alias is created automatically whenever OS X is installed on a system that has OS 9. Obviously, even though you've deleted all the appropriate folders, there is still enough of OS 9 in your machine to leave OS X detecting it and replacing the alias every time.

While the method you outlined would be suitable for removing the system folders for OS 9, it would only work on the ones you can see (that is, since you're dragging them in from the finder into the terminal, right?)
There must, therefore, be a number of files that you may have missed because they don't appear in the finder. These are files listed in the .hidden file (in the root directory).

Apple is right in saying there is no easy way to uninstall OS 9 and retain OS X ... there simply is no way for the system to work out what you want to keep and what to get rid of. Removing the OS 9 system folders will free up the space, but actually getting rid of 9 for good is a lot harder.

Well, you've freed up the space, so I wouldn't get too worried on that count. If the only souvenier of your 9 installation is an annoying alias, you've done okay. I'd assume there is a setting there somewhere that will prevent it from reappearing, and I'd hope we'll find it.