[bob_white]

Hi all.

I'm attempting to reformat an intel based iMac. I recently purchased this second hand from a guy who was moving out of town and needed the $. He, like myself, was an art student and had installed the full CS3 suite pack Corel Painter IX on the machine but unfotunately didn't give me any of the discs for the software or OS. When I booted the computer up I quickly caught on that all of his folders names, login names and admin and short names were long lines of expletives. While I changed most of the passwords and admin names, the short name still exists and while I won't say here what it is, I can say that I wouldn't want anyone to see it and think it was my own doing. So I felt that the best way to deal with it was to go out and buy a copy of OS X from my campus apple store and reformat the whole thing.


My questions are these :

1- Is there ANY way to save the adobe creative suite pack, because this is a $2k set of software that I will in no way be able to afford to replace, and Painter IX, yet still format the drive back to the factory settings?

2) when I bought the copy of os x from the apple store I was guaranteed that it would work on an intel based mac, (I'm not very mac savy so I was trying to make sure I was getting the correct disc), however when I pop in the Mac OS X version 10.4 Tiger I get a pop up stating " Mac OS X 10.4 cannot be installed on this machine. Please consult the documentation for the list of supported Macintosh Computers". So what am I doing wrong?


ANY help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

[adamfishercox]

That Mac Genius wasn't very Mac Geniusy. I don't think that they sell 10.4 for Intel, simply because your system discs are supposed to take care of that. I COULD be wrong, though.

[cybergoober]

Yeah, I'm fairly certain off-the-shelf Mac OS X will not install on Intel-based Macs. I would demand a refund (if possible; they did "guarantee" that it would work, after all)

The best I can offer is to either:
a. Try to acquire the appropriate Install Disc(s) for your model iMac either from eBay, or perhaps Apple themselves.
b. Create a new admin account and delete the old (original) admin account. That will get rid of the questionable shortname while retaining all of the software/system settings etc. I believe there is an option to have the system create a disk image of the deleted account. That way if you need some odd preference file or something you could mount that image and retrieve the necessary file(s).

Good luck.

[Cold Warrior]

You're all correct -- 10.4 retail is PPC-only. You must have your system's restore/install disc to reinstall the Intel 10.4.

OP - return your 10.4 retail purchase for a full refund.

Like cybergoober said, your best bet is a friend with the same MacIntel, or hit up Apple for a copy (they may ask for a small fee; I don't know).

[adamfishercox]

That's fairly idiotic that they don't support any of their current product line with retail software-- People lose discs. They know that.

[cybergoober]

Yeah, for some reason OS X Server is Universal, yet OS X client is not.

[bob_white]

lol, I was just about to come and post the same thing, I had just found the processor requirements on the booklet and on the apple store page. Wow yeah, he's not a very good employee. Ok so I feel that I have two options:

a) secure a boot disc somehow. I know no one with a mac. If by some form of luck, I do procure a boot disc: when the login comes up @ the startup, the name that hte copy of os x is registered to, that's what I need to get rid of, also that folder in finder with the little house icon, has another dirty name, that I renamed with bad consequences, I had to undo it and change some folders around, apprently you're not supposed to do it.

b) wait til october, another month, for the leopard to come out, wiill that disc be able to reformat an intel based mac or have they released that info yet?

[adamfishercox]

Leopard will be able to install on an intel Mac. It HAS to. Otherwise none of their new customers could use it.

Have you tried just creating a new account and deleting the old one? Because even if you get a disc, if you want to keep the programs, the obscene name will stay, too.

[bob_white]

I've read of some sort of archiving process, where you zip so and so files to a folder, reformat and then pull these back up. Is this a possible solution for my problem?

[Cold Warrior]

Originally Posted by adamfishercox 

Have you tried just creating a new account and deleting the old one? Because even if you get a disc, if you want to keep the programs, the obscene name will stay, too.

Good idea. Seconded!

I'd try that in combination with waiting for Leopard. (1) Create new admin account; delete old. (2) Buy Leopard when it comes out and start fresh on the Mac.

[adamfishercox]

Originally Posted by bob_white 

I've read of some sort of archiving process, where you zip so and so files to a folder, reformat and then pull these back up. Is this a possible solution for my problem?

No, because if you reformat, you have no disc to install from, and when you unzip the disc, the account name will still be there. The first thing to do is make a new account. Otherwise, unless you erase and install your hard rive (thus erasing Adobe CS3) you will be stuck with the bad name.

[bob_white]

alright so in the mean time, how do I go about renaming those things that have the obscenities? I have the admin password and all, so I mean I'm logged in as admin.

Also, if I were to have an external hardrive is there any way I can plug it up and copy the applications over to the external drive and then back over to my comp? not sure how to go about doing that.

[adamfishercox]

What you need to do is create a brand new admin account. All of the Applications should be kept intact. Then delete the original account with all the obscene stuff in it. The computer will ask whether you want to delete everything, or save a copy of the files. Choose to save a copy, and then you can take out any files you need from the saved copy, and then trash the rest.

And the external drive idea might work for a clean install, but it's kind of pointless if you do what I say above.

[bob_white]

Alright so I've created a new admin on the computer, do I login as the one I'm deleting and delete it from there, or do I login to my new account and delete it then?

[adamfishercox]

log in to the new account.

[bob_white]

alirght I did login to the new account, pulled up the user settings, opened the little padlock, but am not able to click the minus symbol to delete the old admin account, or even login to the old admin account and delete it while I'm on it.

[adamfishercox]

select the new account, and then click the minus symbol If that doesn't work, post a screenshot of the window.

[bob_white]

ok I just tried it, after getting to the window where it informed me that hitting ok would backup the home folder as a delete accounts folder that could be accessed, I hit ok and it spun and spun for about 10 minutes until I pulled up force quit to see if it had locked up or it was working. It had indeed locked up so I force quite it, log in on the old admin is still ok and the account is still there, I'm trying to copy my 20 gigs of music to a folder that is accessible to the other user account, I admin'd an untitled folder into the apps window full of my music, in case I did lose that.

Should I try again or do you think it'll just freeze up again, I'm running 2 gigs of ram and a core duo, I dunno why it'd freeze.

[adamfishercox]

sound like this dude has a screwed up install... Try it again and let it spin. The spinning doesn't always mean it's frozen. It means it stopped responding to the system, which most of the time means it's frozen, but in this case may mean that it is just moving a lot of files.

[bob_white]

alirght I'm copying tthat music, which'll take about 8 more min. and I'm emailing class docs and things to myself. so gimme abotu 20 min and I'll try again

[bob_white]

alirght so this time I gave it a total of 15 minutes and it had done nothing, I went to force quit and again it said it was not responding. Is there way I can manually delete it? like the folder in "users"? Another thing is that it is now running extremely slow, like in opening apps and running them, I've never ever seen it this slow. I'm running two gigs of ram here and have never had a problem running itunes at the same time I played warcraft, but just warcraft alone takes nearly 3 minutes to open. Should I be worried?

[adamfishercox]

well, do you have a backup of your files that are on that account? If so, then just delete the account immediately and then move your files over to the new account from the backup.

[cybergoober]

Never mind...

[adamfishercox]

You can delete admin accounts. I did it just yesterday.

[bob_white]

well I feel all smart...you can create a blank folder, add documents/files to the folder and then drop the folder into the apps windo, it'll ask you to authenticate with the admin password, do this and it'll add the folder. In changing users you can still access anything in the app window, so yay.

So yes everything is backed up.

[adamfishercox]

you can also use the drop box. it is a public folder for users to transfer through.

[bob_white]

Thank you all for your help. I finally got the admin to delete, took like 25 minutes and me cooking dinner lol. I think it's good for now, I didn notice a few things like the liscensed user names of microsoft office for mac, they're liscneced to use xxxxxxxxx, you get the idea. Doubt there's much I can do for that except buy the program. forget that. But yeah thanks you guys alot.