During the drought of blog postings I encountered the return of my problem with iPhoto, where it would crash whenever I emptied the trash, leaving empty icons behind. You can read about that experience here.
I did the usual stuff, index and thumbnail rebuild,etc… without success, I did some web searches and came upon a new solution buried among several others. It fixed my problem immediately.
All I had to do was go into iPhoto preferences and uncheck “Show item Counts” then I could empty the trash. I’m able to leave it enabled when I use iPhoto and only have to turn it off when I empty the trash. I typically disable it, empty the trash, shutdown iPhoto and then re-enable it when I start iPhoto if I want it. That may be overkill to do each time but seems easier than cleaning up after a crash.
Unfortunately I’ve lost the original link so can’t give credit where it’s due.
Awesome! This worked for me. I had to quit iPhoto before re-enabling item counts, but this works! Thanks for posting this solution.
Wow, after months of frustration, a solution at last! And a weird hack of a solution at that. Thanks for bringing this to light. I also had to quit iPhoto and relaunch before re-enabling item counts. Otherwise iPhoto crashed and seemed to revert to its pre-emptying trash state. Strangely, it crashed again when I quit iPhoto with item counts disabled, but everything looks okay now that I've relaunched. Corrupt thumbnails are gone and iPhoto quits and empties trash normally.
I had given up trying until two years later when I had 4000 pics in the trash. I'm glad I didn't end up exporting and creating a new iPhoto album. That would have scrapped all my hard work! Thank you so much for posting this and saving us much grief. All is well once again.