Ahh! I had thought that it would be the other way around i.e on your system it would be 'Empty Trash' then 'Empty Trash..."

I have nothing to add to that except to ask whether after you had re-installed the system, you tested Finder before installing any non-Apple supplied software?

My thinking is that since Finder works fine on most people's systems, it has to be something unique about yours that's breaking Finder i.e extra software. I suspect that without doing a full reinstall and checking Finder after each app has been installed you are not going to find out what is causing the problem.

I've tried re-installing both versions, and still nothing doing!

If you have done a fresh install (not preserving any user prefs etc), then there can't be any software reason for what you observe. Hence it must be that your hardware is somehow allergic to that warning dialog !

It certainly seems that way! Such is life I guess!

Hmm, now that you mention this, I realize that my Trash also isn't prompting me, even though I have the pref checked. I'm not bothered -- I look at the Trash before I empty it, and don't actually need to be prompted, but it is odd and it's definitely happening to me in spite of my Finder pref settings.

It *may* be that I futzed around with my system and typed in some command-line command that affected this, maybe taken from a hint on this site, but I don't recall doing it. I can live with it, but that's just lucky for me, since it seems I don't get a choice. I wouldn't be surprised to learn it's a side effect of something else. Hey, here's a possibility: I have a Trash icon on my desktop, with a Folder Action applied to it [it moves files to the 'real' Trash automatically]. Maybe that's the culprit on my system.

Hmm, I see the warning for when I choose the 'Empty Trash...' item in the Finder menu, but not when I choose 'Empty Trash' using the trash dock icon. Is this it? This does seem like a bug to me, especially as it's easier to use the dock icon than it is to use the Finder menu (as the dock icon is available from any app, but you usually need to switch to get to the Finder)

Me, too! That's what's happening on my Mac.
 

Yup, I'd call it a design bug. If you select the preference "Show warning before emptying the Trash", you should definitely be warned.

ibroughton.

I'm sorry if I've dredged up a problem that has now been solved, or that you'd rather forget about, but your problem doesn't seem to have been solved, and a thought just struck me ...

... Mac OSX has several trash folders. One for each user, and one for each external volume (I believe).

So do all the trash folders on your system not show a warning - or is there some pattern here i.e if you throw an item from your user folder into the trash do you get a warning but not if it's an item from an external drive say?

Nope, my Trash in on the same drive, but ....
 

..., hmm, now that you mention it, I recall that I moved all my data from a previous Mac to this one, in the past. In my case, this could have something do with it. It may be a permissions thing. I'm not going to mess with mine rignt now, but you might want to double-check that your permissions are correct. I'd create a new user and compare its permissions to yours.

Of course, if you really did a fresh install and created a new user then, and already tested from that one, I'm out of ideas for now. I'll create a new user on mine some time later today and give that a try, if I get a chance.

"Hmm, I see the warning for when I choose the 'Empty Trash...' item in the Finder menu, but not when I choose 'Empty Trash' using the trash dock icon. Is this it? This does seem like a bug to me, especially as it's easier to use the dock icon than it is to use the Finder menu (as the dock icon is available from any app, but you usually need to switch to get to the Finder)"

I believe that is intentional.The theory is that if you are at the trash can you should know it and you have very easy access to see what's in the trash. If you are the top of the screen using the menu, you may have mis-clicked or slipped from where you want to be , so you should be able to elect to have the warning from that location.