[bbales]

I was trying to copy items from a homemade DVD (pix of my kids in a community theater production; photographer made DVDs of about 600 photos and distributed them on the DVD, with a homemade label) to my computer. I had selected 25 or so photos and was trying to copy them onto my iMac. About 2 MB copied then the copying process froze. I couldn't forcequit and eventually simply restarted the computer. A bunch of file names transferred, with a size of 0. If I try to open these items, it says the item is "used by OSX and cannot be opened."

I then tried to thrown them in the trash -- and Ican do that -- but I get a warning saying "some of the items you are moving are in use by another application. Moving the items can cause problems with the application using them. Are you sure you want to move these items?"

I did move one and I even emptied the trash. But I'm kind of leery of doing anything else. (I finally copied the items about 2-3 at a time. But I'm still having issues with a second DVD by the same theater company. I think it's the label...)

This is a new one, in terms of warning. How can a picture file be used by OSX? And do you think I can simply delete them, despite the warning?

[Cold Warrior]

yeah, they're just corrupted/junk picture files since the copy failed. The system may have assigned them as system files/ownership while it was copying, and didn't change it or apply the file type because the copy failed. Just a theory.

[Sherman Homan]

The Cold Warrior is right, they are corrupted. The reason that OS X thinks it is in use is that the file isn't "in use" in the sense of "opened in Photoshop", it is that the Finder got confused while copying them. Could be directory errors, media errors, permissions errors or just a System that needs to be re-installed. You should start with Disk Utility and see if you can find a problem or two.