[karambos]

I bought my computer from someone and I keep seeing his name in various places like SYSTEM PREFERENCES > USERS and I'd like to substitute his name with mine. I asked someone over at apple forums about this and they told me to open the NetInfo Manager in APPLICATIONS > UTILITIES and to delete him from the users.

I did this and after about 5 minutes, the computer shut down and restarted and now I can't log on any more.

Luckily, yesterday I created an account with user rights only for my collegue. I used that to log on and from within this account a can still see the previous users' name in SYSTEM PREFERENCES > USERS. The previous users' account has my desktop! i.e. all the stuff I've been putting on the desktop over the last few weeks can be found on his desktop. I cannot access the user accounts, though.

If I go to APPLICATIONS > UTILITIES > NET INFO MANAGER > USERS I can see the following:
daemon
michi (the account I created yesterday)
mysql
nobody
root
smmsp
sshd
unknown
www

Please help me log on as an admin as I need my computer for my business.

[TETENAL]

If you purchased a computer from someone else, may I suggest you reformat the hard disk and do a clean install of the operating system? You never know how much the previous owner vermuddled the system.

Boot from the install CD and choose the reformat option in the install options. I you already created documents back them up before of course.

It's the only clean way.

[sbjordal]

Originally posted by karambos:
I bought my computer from someone and I keep seeing his name in various places like SYSTEM PREFERENCES > USERS and I'd like to substitute his name with mine. I asked someone over at apple forums about this and they told me to open the NetInfo Manager in APPLICATIONS > UTILITIES and to delete him from the users.

I did this and after about 5 minutes, the computer shut down and restarted and now I can't log on any more.

Luckily, yesterday I created an account with user rights only for my collegue. I used that to log on and from within this account a can still see the previous users' name in SYSTEM PREFERENCES > USERS. The previous users' account has my desktop! i.e. all the stuff I've been putting on the desktop over the last few weeks can be found on his desktop. I cannot access the user accounts, though.

If I go to APPLICATIONS > UTILITIES > NET INFO MANAGER > USERS I can see the following:
daemon
michi (the account I created yesterday)
mysql
nobody
root
smmsp
sshd
unknown
www

Please help me log on as an admin as I need my computer for my business.

Boot to an install cd (10.2, 10.3), select Change Password from the Installer Menu that comes up after booting to the cd. That will let you change the password on the admin account and root

[Turnpike]

If you archive and install, all your data should be available in your user, if he created his account first

The first account created on an OS X install is given user ID 501. You would automatically regain permissions on all your files through an archive/install. If he created his account second, for whatever reason, it will be on ID 502. Create yourself again, and you'll now have account 502. Repeat as necessary. Once you have what you need, delete all the previous users you created for yourself, if any.

Since you'll need/want to reinstall the OS anyway, this seems like a convenient option. He's most likely 501 anyway.