Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with delete

How to put a new cell service & phone number on a Motorola Razr

cuddles.mcsnuggy — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 08:59:03 -0800

How do I delete old data on a MotoRazr Maxx cell phone which was formerly on Verizon, and set it up as an extra for someone who uses Alltel? My mother uses Alltel as her cellphone service & she's new to having a mobile phone. Mom thinks she's accident-prone, so she has asked if she can have one of our old phones as a backup in case something happens to hers. We have several outdated phones around the house and I'd like to give her my husband's old MotoRazr Maxx. Problem is, we use Verizon, and his old address book and photos & such are still on the phone even though he doesn't use it and it has no active service (we have Blackberries now). My questions are:
- How can I delete all my husband's data from the phone? The manual from Verizon doesn't explain this.
- How to set it up so Mom can use it with Alltel? Can I "install" her phone number on it myself? Or is it easiest just for her to bring it to her Alltel store & have the magical cellphone elves do it there? (is that even possible?)

I've already searched AskMefi & google but didn't really find what I was looking for. Thanks!

How to properly delete a website.

Anonymous — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:04:03 -0800

I think I may have made a mess while deleting my website and need some advice! I had a website up for about 8 months and I decided that at current time, I want to focus on professional endeavors and once I get a bigger, better portfolio, relaunch a new website in a year or so. That being said, I deleted my old website and canceled my host. I was wondering what to do about the dead links that are now floating about on google. Will google eventually remove these? I tried the url removal tool, but google will not do anything, since my website link appears on a couple of third party websites. I'd really like to clean things up, as I do plan on relaunching again in the future. I also understand that the url removal tool is only temporary. So will these links eventually go away? Should I have done this differently? Any tips? Thanks!

Remove, real fast.

the luke parker fiasco — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:32:57 -0800

I'mAnIdiotFilter: Any way to "walk back" an rm -rf in OSX? So, tired and punchy, I screwed up my syntax and instead of running rm -rf in the trash to get rid of a pesky file, I ran it ... from my home directory.

Any way to get back the stuff it wiped before I killed the command? I've done this a time or two with Linux and managed it, but I've no idea what to do on this machine. It's 10.4.11, if that matters.

Should I delete my Facebook account? What are my other options?

mintchip — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 10:33:01 -0800

Should I delete my Facebook account? What are my other options? I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. With regards to staying connected with people who you otherwise see only rarely, it's very handy. Also, without it I might otherwise miss out on certain events that friends post casually on there. I wouldn't get to know what everyone is up to or see friends' pictures posted. I wouldn't get to "stalk" new friends and dates on it, as well as check up on people from my past that I haven't talked to in a while.

However, I also find Facebook to be really annoying and frustrating. It is a time drain. I'm not really comfortable having a huge list of casual contacts (that person at your job who talked to you twice and that guy you met at a cafe once) know what I'm up to in my personal life and who I hang out with. I've burned some bridges in the past so I like to keep my past and present separated. Facebook also makes me worry about my popularity (or lack thereof). For example, why hasn't anyone posted on my wall recently?? Were pictures posted for a friend's party to which I was not invited? Do some of my contacts have me on a limited status where I don't get to see their status updates in my feed? Why did the new friend who used to write on my wall stop? Et cetera. One cannot really answer these sorts of questions with any accuracy

Now, I guess the perfect solution would be that I suddenly become very laidback and not worry about such trivial matters. This being real life, however, that is not going to happen anytime soon. I have tried to use FB on a more limited basis, but in a way you can't; if people write on your wall you're pretty much obligated to write back. Then suddenly you're on it all of the time having the same concerns that I specified above.

Do any of you have these same concerns? What do you think is a good way to deal with this? Is it worth deleting my account? Do I need to tell everyone why? I appreciate your thoughts and feedback.

I don't want to listen to this song anymore.

Fairchild — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:48:16 -0800

I can't remove songs from my iPod touch. Please help me before I lose my mind. In "options" I have clicked "manually manage music and videos", but in my Music folder everything is dithered out, except the "Sync music" box.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks so much.

Starting over with a new laptop, how best to stay organized?

pseudostrabismus — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 12:50:58 -0800

I'd like to know the best way to move a selected group of files & applications to a new laptop, and advice to help ensure that my new Mac doesn't get bunged up with duplicate & improperly deleted files like my old one did, with its inexplicably full hard drive and crammed iTunes & iPhoto folders. This is rather lengthy, geared to the slightly moronic layperson (me), and has 6 sub-questions inside. My old laptop quickly filled up & slowed down. I tried to back up & delete unused files, but later I'd find the same files still tucked away on the machine, not deleted after all. Also, when I first imported files from my old PC to my then-new G4, for some reason a lot of files showed up as "locked" on the new computer. Many of them (just word docs & jpegs, nothing important or complex) were nested into folders (from how I'd organized my old computer)- and try as I might, I could never get them all unlocked to delete them. It was such a pain in the butt.

So I have a new laptop now (thank you, Santa!), and I want to avoid all the problems from last time. Hence, I have some questions. And as you will soon discover, I'm not particularly computer-savvy. Plus I'm inexplicably intimidated by computer jargon. So simple explanations would be really appreciated here!

The potentially-relevant stats:
The old one is a 12" PowerBook G4, purchased in 2005, running OSX 10.4.11
The new one is a 2008 MacBook (aluminum body & glass screen) running OSX 10.5.5
I have a 1GB USB memory stick and a 500GB external firewire drive.

Okay, so here are some really obvious questions:

1. What's the best way to transfer many selected files from my old box to the new one?
I don't want all the files from the old machine- just the ones I'm currently using. And I particularly need to avoid accidentally moving copies of locked files to the new machine- which is tricky as they're all nested deep into folders and I can't find them all. In fact,

2. How do I ensure that I never again have any "locked" files on the new machine?!
Is there a default for this? I don't even know how they all got locked in the first place, and although I know you can select specific files & folders, then hit "Get Info" and select "Unlock", my files are nested deep into various folders, and that command doesn't unlock individual locked files nested in folders- believe me, I've tried!
And I can't just delete the locked files, either- that leaves the originals locked where they were AND adds locked & therefore undeletable duplicate files to the Trash, thereby doubling the number of locked files, aargh. I don't want to go all the way to the end of each tentacle and unlock the files one by one- there are hundreds.
Is there an easier, blanket way to unlock them all?

3. How do I transfer programs I downloaded from the web?
VisualHub is the main one I'm concerned about since it's discontinued.
But I'd also like to keep my paid copies of Net News Wire, VLC, Transmit, and Minuteur.
Also, I acquired a few other programs from friends (Final Draft, Photoshop). Is there an easy way to move those over, too?

4. How to transfer drafts of iWeb pages?

5. When I get going on the new computer, how best to keep the files streamlined on that machine?
I noticed that I was losing a lot of disk space to:
a) duplicate, "locked" files, as above
b) extra copies of photos & videos I downloaded from my digital camera- they all went into iPhoto, which was fine, but then there seemed to be other copies (?) floating around in the "Pictures" folder, and in other places.
c) iTunes songs. In the past, I would try to delete them in iTunes by selecting & dragging to trash or hitting delete, (like I used to on Windows Music). And then, after "deleting" them, I'd be annoyed to note that I didn't free up any disk space... because the files were still sitting in my Music folder. Obviously my limited PC skillz didn't transfer really well.

6. Is there an easy web tutorial that shows how you're supposed to manage iTunes?

Oh these are such dumb questions. I'm embarassed. Sorry, smart computer people. This is seriously not my forte. If you ever need help with something I'm good at, like public speaking or feng shui or crossing your eyes or something, I promise to be soooo nice when I help you! THANK YOU.

Automatically remove certain items in Firefox history?

sittered — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:02:36 -0800

How can I arrange it so that my Firefox history is automatically purged of sites of a certain domain like imdb.com or facebook.com? I don't know much in terms of scripting languages, but I won't rule that out as a possible method. I was thinking in terms of a greasemonkey script or a full-fledged extension, but a script that directly edits the history database file is OK, too.

I use Mac OS X with Firefox 3.0.4.

Find and delete hidden files on Mac

wavejumper — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:12:33 -0800

Help me find and delete hidden files on my Mac! I've been using the program Graphics Converter to try to make a large .MOV slideshow out of 1500 JPEG images. It keeps crashing because it runs out of disc space (I think that's why anyway), and then I end up with even less hard drive space available...it's leaving hidden temporary files behind. I've narrowed them down to somewhere in my System folder...about 13 gigs worth, but I can't actually see them. How do I locate them and clean them out?

Anyway of deleting containing folder with a right click on Vista?

dazzle — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:53:20 -0800

I have re-organised my Vista PC to use searches instead of the usual folder hierachy in Explorer to navigate the file system. What I am looking for is a way to right click on a file and delete the containing folder, does anyone know of a registry hack or software which will let me do this?

I must be the only person wanting to get rid of XP and use vista.

gergtreble — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 12:41:51 -0800

I started with XP. Installed vista. Then I could choose between XP and Vista. I'm not using XP any more. Can I just delete the XP partition? Picture the scene. I built a HTPC and put XP media center on it. I didn't like it. So I bought vista, and amazingly it works brilliantly! When I installed vista it placed me in a dual boot scenario. I'm not using XP any more and my vista partition is running out of space. So I want to get rid of the XP partition and then expand my vista partition into the free space.

If I delete the XP partition from within Vista will I bork the boot process?

What would be the best way to get rid of the XP partition and still have a working system?

Thanks in advance.

Can't delete my mail.

blaneyphoto — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 12:04:57 -0800

Mail won't let me delete one particular email! I've got a brand new 24" iMac, running OSX 10.5 (Leopard) and everything is fine - except this one email that I can't get rid of! I've tried everything I can think of but it still hangs out when deleted. Specifically, when I delete it, rather than going to the trash it just dims as though its been marked as "read". It then appears as unread in my inbox the next time I launch Mail. Its a message from a yahoo group if that matters. All the other messages from that group have been received, read and deleted just fine.

Any ideas???

Undeleteable bookmark folder

aerotive — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 04:32:15 -0800

Is there any way to move or delete a top-level folder in the All Bookmarks folder in Firefox 3? In FF2 my bookmark toolbar folder is named "null" and has no bookmarks. When I installed FF3 this folder was carried over into the All Bookmarks section and it seems to be undeletable and unmovable.

Here's what it looks like from the main Bookmarks menu, here's what it looks like in Organize Bookmarks.

80s power ballads, begone.

twistofrhyme — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:04:32 -0800

dumb question: when i delete a song from itunes, where does it go? i don't understand the delete mechanism in itunes. when i delete a photo in iphoto, for instance, it ends up in the iphoto trash, which i can then empty (as a seperate action from deleting my laptop's trash).

when i highlight a song in itunes and press delete, it vanishes from my itunes playlist. but it doesn't end up in my laptop's trash bin, and i don't see an itunes-specific trash. so where are those songs going, and how do i get rid of them for real, to free up some hard drive space?

oh, and i'm running osx 10.4.11.
thanks.

Deleting very large directory

justkevin — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:42:14 -0800

How to delete a huge directory on Linux without overloading the system? I've looked at this question which is basically my exact situation, but I can't get any of the solutions described too work without killing the system.

I've tried:
rm -rf mydir
nice rm -rf mydir
nice -n 19 find mydir -type f -exec rm -v {} \;
nice -n 19 rm -rf mydir&

And many other combinations of rm, find rm, nice find rm, etc, but all cause the server load to rise to dangerous levels quickly (I kill the process when `top` hits 20, I'm assuming the machine would hang if allowed to continue).

So is it possible to remove a directory with a lot of files without killing the server?

Recover a deleted Google map

Who_Am_I — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 13:00:00 -0800

How do I recover a deleted Google map? I accidentally deleted a map that I made in Google Maps. How do I get it back? It's still cached somehow because I went back to it using my browser history, but if I go to Google maps in another tab it's not there anymore. I have a tab sitting here looking at the map, but I have to leave work in about half an hour! Help!

Apple: Delete Files On Another Mac?

davidinmanhattan — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:52:07 -0800

How do I delete files on one Mac that I am connecting to via Firewire target disk mode? My five month old MacBook Pro's display is dead. I woke up this morning to find the display just didn't. Apple support was, um, unsupportive (an "I'm so sorry" would have been nice, but I digress) so I spent $40 on a Firewire cable and now have access to my MacBook Pro via my PowerBook. Tomorrow I will take the MacBook to the Apple store, but in the mean time I have very sensitive documents on the MacBook that I don't want anyone to see. (OK, I'm stupid, but who can remember every password to every site, so I kept a list, and there are bank account numbers, and, honestly, my personal journal, which, while not terribly exciting, still is personal.)

I can copy files and backup whatever I need, but I can't figure out how to delelte.

I just want to delete some files before I hand over my (digital) life to someone.

Any ideas? I have unsuccessfully scoured the Internet, but no luck!

Thanks!

Proper GET/POST Design for Deleting Items on a Web Page

GregX3 — Tue, 22 May 2007 17:21:37 -0800

I'm designing a webpage that will have a list of items and each item can be deleted. I was thinking to have the delete command be link to a URL that does the delete when called. But then I realized maybe that isn't safe since a spider following links might cause things to be deleted. What is the proper design for this type of thing?

Windows is usually so good at deleting stuff, even the things you want.

baserunner73 — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 20:00:21 -0800

So for some unknown reason (probably I hit enter when I wasn't looking), Windows has decided to plunk down a 'Windows Service Pack Setup' file, update.exe on my external, USB, media HDD. I don't want it there. If it were as simple as right click-delete i wouldn't be here, and neither would the file. So its in a folder with a sub folder and its labeled with a really cool name, something like E:\54435fdg6rergt5\update\update.exe (not actually the folder name).
There were a few other similar folders with it, but in my anger with windows at touching my drive (mine, dont touch, got that MS?) I deleted them. They all went straight to the recycle bin (which I've siince emptied). Since I like my computer pristine, I've tried every thing I can think of to delete, I tried shutting down explorer and deleting, but it did nothing (perhaps because the target was on an external USB drive?). I tried the program MoveOnBoot, but it gave me an error message, I tried a Linux Live boot CD, but it would only allow read-access of my HD, so I tried my copy of Ultimate Boot CD, but at this point it was just shots in the dark, and any utility that looked helpful (like a DOS file explorer) didnt recognize my laptop's chipset. Uhm...so, now what? How do i get rid of it?

How do I delete a stubborn mpeg file?

zembla3 — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 08:58:04 -0800

My computer is refusing to let me delete a fairly large file. It's an mpeg movie file I downloaded from Limewire (have mercy, MPAA)! Whenever I try to delete the file, I get a message claiming the file is in use by another program, but I don't see any programs running in task manager that would be using this file. The file is in my documents folder. Any thoughts on how this stubborn mpeg can be deleted?

How do I recover my Entourage Calendar?

ruwan — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 22:01:52 -0800

How do I recover my Entourage Calendar? -- While importing my Entourage calendar into iCal, my MacBook Pro froze up, and I had to Force Quit both programs. When I restarted Entourage, my entire calendar (appointments, dates, events) was completely blank. Any geniuses out there who can help me recover it?

how to restore the warning in itunes for playlist delete?

annoyance — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 06:31:40 -0800

dumb itunes question: i need to GET BACK the warning message when i try to delete a playlist in itunes. i keep on doing it accidently lately but i had checked the "don't ask me anymore" checkbox. perhaps i am out of luck but i feel like itunes must have right, so i never really deleted a playlist by accident for the first several years using itunes but the past couple weeks i have done it 3 times. and it is no fun, i spent all day making new playlists and they are gone gone gone! i know i can restore the library files from backups i have, but then i lose the playlists i have made since that backup. i have googled a bunch but have found nothing but complaints about the lack of an "Undo" feature. that would also be wonderful if it exists somehow.

God forgive me - I need to delete then retrieve a MySpace URL

skylar — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 11:47:30 -0800

If I delete a MySpace profile, and wait the stated 48 hours for the account to become inactive, can I grab the username and URL again and set up a new page with the same name? I have searched the AskMeFi archive but can't seem to find anyone who's encountered this issue. I have been asked to set up a MySpace page (God forgive me) for a music project and only after setting up the profile realised that it should have been in the music section, which seems to grant a few extra facilities special to bands.

I have already requested deletion but I have some time to make a decision, as MySpace demands that I click on a link in an e-mail to actually confirm deletion. The e-mail says: "We will cancel your account within 48 hours, after which you will no longer be able to log in. Please note that cancelled accounts may not be reactivated and all of your account information, including your friend network, will be removed from MySpace."

What it doesn't say is whether or not I (or someone else) will be able to grab the URL and username, whether it will be permanently blocked out, or whether it will be blocked out for a long time.

Mac recovery

joshuak — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 11:45:52 -0800

Help me recover a file on my mac! I just need ONE little powerpoint because I saved it on a flash drive, made changes, then deleted it like an idiot. I've looked at previous threads but Norton Utilities has been discontinued and I don't have time to order it from ebay or whatever!

Mysql - Deleting items omitted from an insert|update

hatsix — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 14:01:24 -0800

MysqlFilter: I need someone with mighty mysql-Fu to help me out here. I have a list of items stored in my database (60 or so per user), they get sent to the flash application that I have, then once the user is done with everything, they press "save" (20 to 60 times a day), and it saves the list of items back to the database. I was doing an insert on duplicate update, but this doesnt get rid of the items that may have been deleted. So my question is this, should I:

A) Delete all items first, then insert all new records.

B) Keep a list of things that have been deleted in the program, and send that list back with all of the other data.

C) Add a last modified timestamp and delete anything that wasn`t updated in the last minute

This isn`t a huge application, and definitely won`t be public... I can`t imagine more than two people using this concurrently, but beings that the mysql database is on my desktop, its in my best interest if I keep things quick, and in everyone`s best interest if I keep things responsive.

Will I notice if I just delete&insert? What would the difference in load be? Would it be worth my time to program in B or C?

Thanks!

Deleted photo crisis

londongeezer — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 14:42:33 -0800

I accidentally deleted, in-camera, an important and unrepeatable picture. It was written to a sony memory stick pro in a sony cybershot dsc-p150 camera. Any way to retrieve it?