[shreddog]

Being a newcomer to the Apple scene, I think I did something dumb. I bought my iMac used and wanted to change the name of the home folder to my name ("Mike")(instead of the previous owners). To my surprise, I was able to right-click the home folder in Finder and rename. I thought everything was fine and dandy until...

When I next booted up the computer, I now have a folder with my name and the original home folder is back. The original home folder now has nothing in it and iTunes and iPhoto don't seem to know where to find the libraries (under the newly created folder "Mike").

How do I get it back to the original settings so that when I boot up, it has all of my libraries and settings? The name on the folder somehow seems less important now. Can I just copy relevant folders back to the home folder?

[chris v]

Try just moving all the stuff from "Mike" to the new home folder with the orig. name. Once you've done that, you'll need to log out/in in order for the preferences to change.

[shreddog]

It won't let me copy "Keychain" becuase it says I do not have permission. What is "Keychain" and is it very important? I assume it is since it is restricting my access, but will I be able to get the old info from the Keychain back to the home folder?

[SSharon]

As this is a used computer, I would suggest backing up all of your data and wiping the hard drive and reinstalling everything. This will let you make your own user names and remove parts of the OS you don't need (language packs, printers, etc.). It may even make the computer run faster if the previous owner had lots of pref files and other stuff you don't need in the libraries.

One last thing. Even though its a Mac, Always Back Up Your Data.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by shreddog:
It won't let me copy "Keychain" becuase it says I do not have permission. What is "Keychain" and is it very important?

Keychain is a systemwide database of passwords and certificates. Since you haven't encountered it in the past, it shouldn't be a problem if you don't carry it over. Any of your passwords which had been stored in it will need to be entered once more, but only once.

If you had certificates in the Keychain this would become more critical. However, it doesn't sound like you do, so you can safely ignore that file if you want. More likely, it has passwords from the previous owner of the machine, and you really shouldn't be going through those anyway. Better to just take the file completely out and start your own keychain on a fresh file.

[shreddog]

I would love to wipe out the hard drive, but he has some programs installed for which he did not give me the original disks. I guess I'll just manually copy everything back to the home folder.

Is there a way to reinstall the OS a making new users without wiping ouot existing programs?

[Superchicken]

You should be able to back up those Apps too... uhhh... hmm though Tiger's coming out soon. I'd say burn everything important to CD or transfer to another Mac over firewire or ethernet. Then do a clean install with Tiger keeping any apps that you don't want to loose (the iLife ones, Office if he gave it to you, etc.) And back up your library

[tooki]

The following is all assuming that you have done nothing since the original post.

OK, let's say that your home directory was originally called "samjones". You renamed it to "Mike". After rebooting, you have a new home directory called "samjones", and your old one is left stranded as "Mike".

The solution is to rename the new "samjones" folder into something else, say, "samtemporary", and then rename "Mike" back to "samjones".

Then you can use one of a couple of freeware utilities (I'm sure someone can tell you the name of one) to properly rename the home directory and the related user names.



That said, I agree that it might be a good idea to clean off the iMac with a fresh reformat and install of Mac OS X.

tooki