I have a ISO on a thumb drive that I would like to remove. normally I can just delete or move it to trash this one will not allow me to do that. any sugestions?

Depends on how it got there in the first place. Knowing nothing of that, I'd first try getting rid of it as root. Through your graphical file manager:

Be sure the jumpdrive is mounted (visible, usable, etc.) through your normal file manager. In other words, make sure you can look inside it.

Hit Alt+F2> Enter gksudo nameofyourfilemanagerhere

Example: gksudo nautilus

Example: gksudo thunar

Enter your password. Now you should have opened a root filemanager. BE CAREFUL. Navigate to your jumpdrive and delete the iso. If all goes according to plan, your jumpdrive should now be clear of the iso and you should immediately close the root window. (Safety first!)

If you opened the ISO previously, it may still be showing in that state by the process.

You can run something like the following command to kill the process:

sudo fuser -k /path/to/iso

Replace the "/path/to/iso" part with the actual path to the iso.

@wfg when I did as you sugested I got {unable to locate theme murrine} then I went back to terminal and did su and tried as root that way and I got {the connection is closed(g-io-error-quark, 18)}
@Leppie I got the same as above using sudo, switched to root a list of letters to use after fuser. now I will go look up murrine.

Murrine is a theme engine. It's meaningless in this context. Looking it up won't help.

How did the iso actually end up on the jumpdrive in the first place? This can important.

I downloaded the iso to the thumb drive. Used sparky to prepare the thumb drive. what I am seeing when I open the drive is that the files have a symbol of a padlock on them.
I have no idea why that is so. had that happen to some photos and have never been able to copy them.

At a guess, that sounds like you built a Live installer thingumabob. <-- (I like that spellcheck didn't bat an eye at that.) If it were me and there was nothing I wanted to recover, I'd just use gparted to erase the partition and make a new one.

Dinga, is there any reason not to just format the thumbdrive? If you can see it with gparted, you should be able to do that, I think. Then it will be almost like new. 😉

Didn't I just say that? I thought I just said that.