Can't delete Garageband song files...WTF is going on?

[theblue1]

OK... lemme say right off that I'm asking this question for a friend. And let me also say that I, myself, have very limited experience on Macs. I usually figure out how to do what I want, since I figure most of the basic functionality will be similar to my darkside home OS (and, so far, that's been mostly true) so it's just a matter of "translating" from one GUI to another. Anyhow.


The thing is, he's got 101 songs in his Garageband folder but he's not able to move them or delete them. And now he can't create a new track.

And when we did a Save As to another folder, we couldn't move or delete that file, either. With or without GB running. (This wasn't a file that was open/in use anywhere.)


Like I said, I'm no Mac maven -- but I've never run into a situation where I simply couldn't move or delete a file before.


What gives?

Anyone?

[sonnylarsen]

The first thing I would do is check under "get info" to make sure the files did not somehow get locked. To do this, ctrl-click(or right-click if you have a two button mouse) on the file and choose "get info". There will be a check box for locked. If it is not checked, the next thing I would do is repair disk permissions. This is done by going to "Applications" under Finder and finding the Utilities folder. In the utilities folder you will find an app called Disk Utility. If you click on the hard drive you will get a "repair disk permissions" option. This may take a few minutes.

If this stuff doesn't work, trying a simple reboot might. I have never experienced this problem myself but 90% of any problems I have had on my mac have been solved by repairing disk permissions.

Another good place for advice is in apple's support forums either under OS X or the specific Computer model.

[theblue1]

Yeah... they weren't locked. That much I made sure of.

I'll follow your advice. The permissions angle may be a good one, since this guy is very much not a computer guy and he bought it for his GF (though he's the one who's ended up using it so she's buying the cheap PC laptop she wanted to get in the first place. It all works out. )


And I'll make sure we reboot, too. It's well within the realm of possibility that he's been putting this thing into standby for the last few weeks... an idea that had not crossed my mind. That'd be a good one.


Thanks a million!!!

[sardi]

You might also need to be the admin to modify the file.

Get Info on the folder (same as checking if its locked) and make sure under the ownerships tab that its set to "read & write". This might be the issue.

You will need to be logged in as admin to change this afaik.

Hope that sorts it.

[theblue1]

Excellent... thanks! I strongly suspect that's what's going on -- although I wonder about his inability to start a new song... maybe he was logged in as admin before but somehow got switched to a simple user account.

One thing I suspected was that he had perhaps somehow started saving his songs into his GB application folder (if such a thing is even possible) since I could imagine locking such a folder by default. Perhaps if he'd been logged in as an admin he could have saved into the folder and then, later, logged in as a user he was shut out...

All speculation, of course. I'm pretty much a fish out of water on a Mac.

Thanks again. A lot!