Last update...

It seems that in 2008, i can run the alter command and get confirmation that something was updated in the system catalog along with the error about the file...

I also tried the following, but no luck here, got the following message...

USE tempdb;

GO

DBCC SHRINKFILE('tempdev1', EMPTYFILE)

USE master;

ALTER DATABASE tempdb

REMOVE FILE tempdev1;

GO

DBCC SHRINKFILE: Page 3:511072 could not be moved because it...