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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Home Account?

DJ OLe - Jul 22, 2005 - 9:40 am

First off, I am such a newbie to Macs! So I bought my Powerbook G4 from my local Guitar Center. It was the floor model of the GC store in Salt Lake City. Since I've owned it, it has always bugged me that I couldn't figure out how to change the name of the home user account. The other day I was looking around and changed the name of the home user account to my name. I changed the name but the home icon still says guitarcenter. Now when my Powerbook loads up, it doesn't load with any of the settings I had. No desktop, my dock was all different, I couldn't find my iTunes library, my pictures, non of my files that weren't located in the Macintosh HD. I ended up finding all of my iTunes library, but I think I duplicated them somehow because I check out my HD space left and it went from 34gig to 17gig. I know that I need to keep at least 20 free so that the virtual memory works right.

So, my questions:

How do I change the home icon to my name?

How do I find out if I have duplicated my 16 or so gigs of mp3's in my iTunes library?

How can I get all my pics back into iPhoto at start up?

Basically, how to I get my computer back?

Thanks guys for your time, and as always, your help is greatly appreciated!!

Erik Stratford
erik.stratford@hill.af.mil

bobw - Jul 22, 2005 - 10:13 am

Hi Eric

Changing the User name can screw things up like this. There is a program to do this, but it's too late now.

Since this is a floor model, I would suggest backing up your music, files and photos and reformatting the drive.

You'll choose your own user name and start with a fresh system.

Look in the User Directory. There should be a folder there with all your files

Move all back to the original user. You should see the iPhot and music there.

You don't need to keep 20GB free. You need to keep 15% of the total hard drive space free to work properly.




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Bobw - Macosx.com Tech Support

DJ OLe - Jul 22, 2005 - 2:39 pm

So how do I reformat?

Erik

bobw - Jul 22, 2005 - 2:42 pm

Eric

You would boot from the OS CD/DVD by holding the C key down. You get the installer screen. Follow the prompts to do a clean install.
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Bobw - Macosx.com Tech Support

DJ OLe - Jul 22, 2005 - 2:44 pm

Ahhh, that explains why when I first bought it that I couldn't get a clean boot. I tried cd/dvd when I bought but had no idea that you need to hold the "c" key down!

Right on!

Thanks Bob!

I let you know if I have any snags.

Thanks again!

Erik