Trouble Cleaning my Macbook Pro

B

BeardManly

Registered
I have a game and some movies on my macbook pro I don't want anymore, but when I try to delete them a message pops up saying I'm not permitted to access the files. I'm the only person who uses the macbook and I have administrator priveleges, and I'm not completely inept with macs (I installed Windows 7 with bootcamp...after much frustration...ok I'm inept) but I can't figure out how to solve this problem. Also, when it does let me delete a file, I drag it to the trash can and it deletes immediately. I can't figure out how to change these options either...any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
I did that, and it ended up creating two admin accounts...on one I was able to delete the game that was taken up the most space, but can't access the other files. I have about twice as much free memory now, which is great, but on my old account i still have the problems with deleting items and changing preferences, even though it's still an admin account...on my new account i seem to have the default factory settings up, but can't just delete the old account...now what?
but thank you for your help so far with deleting that game!
 
Two things:

1) When you try to delete the 2nd account, what happens to prevent you from doing so? I mean, does it throw an error, or is the option greyed out, or how does it look?

2) Have you verified that your (first) admin account is the owner of the files that you are trying to delete? You can do so by opening finder, highlighting the file, choosing "get info", and under sharing and permissions, if you are not the owner, you can choose "make me(account name) the owner." This should probably have been fixed when you did repair permissions, but I was just curious if you have read/write permissions to the files in the get info permissions details.
 
"Repair Permissions" in Disk Utility does NOT make any changes to files/apps/folders in any user accounts, or changes to third-party apps.
Ownership in your user folder is a simple terminal command:
sudo chown -R username /Users/username/
Change "username" to your own account name.
The command will ask for your admin password, which will NOT appear when entered.

That chown command will at least assure that you 'own' all the files in your own user folder. Likely, it will fix the other issues that you are having.
 
Oops, sorry. I just recently repaired permissions on my machine and it changed a number of file permissions to the default, which is why I mentioned it. I Didn't realize that it completely stayed out of user accounts (only system folders, then, I assume?).

I definitely agree with DeltaMac that chown will always work and is the most direct method. I just sometimes that using the finder is a little easier.
 
Proletariat99 said:
1) When you try to delete the 2nd account, what happens to prevent you from doing so? I mean, does it throw an error, or is the option greyed out, or how does it look?
Click to expand...

The account is greyed out.
The game that was taking up the most space is gone now, but there's an .mp4 movie and an .m4v movie i made in itunes that i want deleted too. .mp4 simply says "this item can not be deleted" and the .m4v says it's in use, so I'm trying to find out what might be "using" the file
 
also, is there a way to format and restart the mac partition to default settings (backing up all my important files of course!) without affecting the windows partition? or maybe just tweak them slightly and give the mac more memory without having to go through the hassle of backing up the HD and everything?
 
BeardManly said:
also, is there a way to format and restart the mac partition to default settings (backing up all my important files of course!) without affecting the windows partition?
Click to expand...

If I understand your question, you should be able to back up your Mac partition with either Time Machine--which I do not use--or a cloning program like SuperDuper! or CarbonCopyCloner to an External HD. You should back up your data daily anyways.

Then you can boot off the Installation Disk, go to Disk Utility, erase just that particular partition, format it, then cleanly install your OS. Then use Migration Assistant to carry "you" over from the Ex-HD.

--J.D.
 
Update: I decided just to erase my mac partition and start clean. I backed up all my word documents and my itunes library onto an external hard drive, and i have 70 gb of free memory now!
...but now I just need to figure out why firefox is so slow, and why migration assistant is practically frozen... but thanks to everybody for the help! if i have any more problems, i'll be sure to post them here...
so yeah, i guess i'll post again in a few minutes... (jk)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top