Broken AOS-5.1 Trash Can

[Andrew Stephenson]

Whilst salvaging masses of files from an old Apple Mac OS 10.4.10 installation, my AOS-5.1's Trash Can got corrupted.  I dutifully Read The Flaming Manuals, pressed obvious buttons (eg, on Close Down and on the TC drop-down menu) and even located the TRASH root-level folder (on Drive D: of a C:..K: set) and had lots of fun crashing the system.  BTW, I found the TRASH folder with "DIR /a" then ATTRIB to clear H and S flags, then deleted sub-folders 3,4,5 -- of 1,3,4,5 (NB, no "2") -- which left D:\TRASH\1\* refusing to be erased (so as to empty the Trash Can).

Okay, I've probably done something really daft.  But can anyone please tell me how to empty that wretched Can?   

BTW, suggestions for future developments:

a) IMHO, the Trash Can (or Rubbish Bin as we Limeys call it) is there to handle those "Oops" moments, not as a stand-in for regular file handling methods.  Why protect it so fiercely?  Using H and S attributes should suffice, perhaps with a pop-up warning if someone inadvertently tries deleting anything important.

b) The drop-down TC menu's "Empty Trash Can" option should become "Reset Trash Can (and empty it)".

c) When an emptying operation is done, or if the TC cannot find the TRASH folder, it (re)creates it.  This allows use of the RAM Disk for the trash/rubbish -- along the way reducing wear of SSMs.

d) Let the User choose the TRASH drive, perhaps on the same Properties page which tells which drives are handled by the TC.  How about extra setup boxes: "Which drive should be used for the \TRASH folder? [<drive letter>]" and "Is this a RAM Disk? [Y/N]".  The second question allows the User to be advised to use a suitable format for the RAM Disk, like HPFS not FAT32.

[David Graser]

You might try installing an archive.  Is you haven't made any archives, your only archive will be the original after installing ArcaOS.

Open desktop properties and select the archives tab and check the

Recovery choices  > Check "display at each system startup", close and reboot.

Select the archive at bootup.  This should restore it to the original install if you don't have any other archives.


Another option to try is to download the WPTools to a directory, unzip,  and at an ArcaOS prompt, type

Checkini /C

I usually accept the default prompts

[ivan]

Hi Andrew,

It sounds as if you need something like File Freedom which does things like deleting individual files to complete directories, setting or changing file attributes and other useful things

Available on Hobbes as FileFreedom_2-02.zip

 A list of features is here:

            * Configurable Timers to allow automatic refresh of Drive Table and File Folders
            * Append text files to a master file.
            * Pop-up Menu
            * Dynamic display and writing of Volume Labels.
            * Create directories 'on the fly' with copy/move operations
            * Copy or Delete complete directory trees that contain files/sub-directories
            * Tree size in bytes at the press of a button
            * Auto-Scroll while selecting files with mouse
            * Create Desktop Objects from program files with single keystroke
            * Directory Bookmarks for quick access to frequently used directories.
            * Sliding windows
            * Toolbar - Verical/Horizontal/Hide
            * Dynamic Pushbutton descriptions on status bar
            * Pushbutton support for search tool (PMSeek or User-Defined)
            * Unlimited Third-Party Viewer support
            * Support for eight User-Defined programs - OS/2-Windows-Dos
            * Support for Rexx scripts with Viewers and User programs
            * File Filters
            * Four different file views including detailed
            * Sort files by Age, Name, Date or Extension in Ascending or Decending order
            * Drag and drop colors and fonts
            * a Pushbutton for your favorite Editor - OS/2-Windows-Dos
            * Hot-Keys (Accelerator Keys)
            * Drag and Drop file management and a fast native alternative
            * Menu bar
            * Dynamic display of Total Files and Bytes Selected,
              Total Bytes Free on Source and Destination, File count
            * An internal Settings Notebook for configurable options
            * Context Sensitive Help
            * Integrated support for Info-Zip's Zip and Unzip utilities
            * One button Zipping of Files, Directory Trees and Drives
            * One button Unzipping
            * Unzip to New Directory created automatically with same name as zip
            * Built in Zip Viewer
            * even more

The one thing that might be a problem is that it doesn't show file sizes if they are bigger than 2tb.

[Rich Walsh]

my AOS-5.1's Trash Can got corrupted

I'm sorry to hear that you're having problems but there's less here than meets the eye.

* There's a 'Trash' folder in the root directory of every drive whose files have gone in the Trash. It's done that way to avoid having to copy anything - the trashed file's directory entry is simply moved to another directory.

* Trash folders are only protected by the 'Hidden' flag, and AFAIK, never by the 'System' flag. Once you get past that, they are completely deletable, whether from the commandline or the WPS. The only reasons I can think of for being unable to delete one is that a file in the Trash is currently open, or you have a commandline session whose current directory is a Trash (sub)directory.

* Personally, I never use the thing and habitually hit Shift-Delete to bypass it. I also regularly delete my Trash folders if they happen to get created. As a test, I created then deleted files on two different drives, giving me the "Trash Full" icon. After opening each drive in Xview, I then deleted both Trash directory trees from the root folders . No problems there. The Desktop Trash icon still showed full and continued to do so even after a Desktop restart, so I opened it. The folder was empty and the icon reverted to "empty".

BTW... when I'm in a situation like you were and seemingly nothing is going right, I resort to the "Windows Miracle Cure": reboot and hope for the best

[Dave Yeo]

The system should be doing automatic archives of the desktop, config.sys etc. Boot and when the white blob appears at the beginning of the boot, press F1, gotta be quick. You will get a menu including a list of archives you can restore. Usually 3 plus the original install one.

[Tom]

The system should be doing automatic archives of the desktop, config.sys etc. Boot and when the white blob appears at the beginning of the boot, press F1, gotta be quick. You will get a menu including a list of archives you can restore. Usually 3 plus the original install one.

You mean Alt + F1 ?

[Dave Yeo]

The system should be doing automatic archives of the desktop, config.sys etc. Boot and when the white blob appears at the beginning of the boot, press F1, gotta be quick. You will get a menu including a list of archives you can restore. Usually 3 plus the original install one.

You mean Alt + F1 ?

Right.

[ivan]

Hi Andrew,

It appears you have two problems.  The first is the trash can which I assume is a feature of Aos- 5.1 because I don't have it on any of my Aos-5.0.7 computers (I don't have Aos-5.1).
The second is why you are using it?  My experience with the windows computer problems of friends usually start with the trash can.  I have never seen a valid use of it - there are ways of undeleting files if you haven't overwritten them.

Now to your main concern - that of losing all the effort you have put in to get Aos to where you want it, for that you can do what I do - use DFSee to make an image of your boot partition plus all the other partitions for work and storage you have and store them externally to the computer (dare I say nas box).  By having a dedicated boot partition you can update it, even totally replace it without losing your work.   

Attached is the layout of the three hard disks of my main computer to give you an idea of what can be done.

[David Graser]

Personally, I like the trashcan.  For those that don't want to use the trashcan, right click to open its properties page

Then on the first tab which is labeled "Trash can", check "Always delete immediately (never use trashcan)

 XWorkplace will perform all delete operations directly, without moving the objects into the trash can first.

[David Graser]

yes, you can. 

On my system, I use the trashcan for deleting wps objects.  For all file deletion, I use FM/2 for deleting files and directories.  Its default is to bypass the trashcan.  I can use it to do WPS delete, but never have.