[llofte]

Hi. I showed this tutorial for a friend for the "full monty". He followed every step perfectly and everything got wiped. Is there a way to go back? Can we fix this? His short username didn't even get changed either.

[whitedog]

llofte said:

Hi. I showed this tutorial for a friend for the "full monty". He followed every step perfectly and everything got wiped. Is there a way to go back? Can we fix this? His short username didn't even get changed either.

It's not clear from your description exactly what got "wiped." If his short user name is still there, then it would seem not everything was destroyed. For a specific suggestion you will need to provide a better description of what went wrong. Still, if you (or your friend) didn't do a full backup before making the change, chances are whatever did get "wiped" on your friend's system is gone for good. Before giving up on it, however, you should try to fix it with DiskWarrior, which generally is the best, last hope in these situations.

In the future, never, never, never do something drastic to your computer - or to a friend's computer - without performing a complete backup first. The best way to prevent such disasters is to back up regularly. Time Machine is the easiest way to do that, though it's not the easiest kind of backup to restore from. There is an old saying that seems to be honored more in the breach these days: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. In this regard, routine maintenance can also help prevent trouble.

This incident provides an excellent example of the risks involved in providing tips for complex operations that will be read and tried by people who don't understand the risks well enough to take appropriate precautions. I don't expect the author of this tip will take it to heart, but, for what it's worth, I think the dangers and precautions should be included in any such tip, in bold type, if necessary.

[llofte]

Thank you for the reply. Sorry for my lack of information.

All his music, photos, and such were gone. He said it looked like a fresh account.

He just got the mac a few days ago so he didn't have anything on there that wasn't already on an external harddrive. He decided to create a new account, delete the one he was trying to rename, and start over.

We understood the risks, but wanted to try. Pretty much his only other option was to start over with a new account anyway, and that's what he's doing now. I was just so sad that it didn't work. I don't understand what went wrong.

Oh well.

Thanks again.

[whitedog]

{quote}All his music, photos, and such were gone. He said it looked like a fresh account.
He just got the mac a few days ago so he didn't have anything on there that wasn't already on an external harddrive. He decided to create a new account, delete the one he was trying to rename, and start over.
We understood the risks, but wanted to try. Pretty much his only other option was to start over with a new account anyway, and that's what he's doing now. I was just so sad that it didn't work. I don't understand what went wrong.{quote}

If does sound like the user account was trashed, somehow. Creating a new account is the safest way to "clean up" a second-hand Mac. Of course you may still have permissions problems. The best way to start fresh is to do just that - erase the hard drive and do a clean install of the system. Of course, this is not desirable if you want to keep some of the third-party applications that were installed by the previous owner. In this case, after creating the new user account, you can do an Archive and Install to get a new system but retain the user account and third-party apps in the Applications and Utilities folders.

[maverickws]

Sorry, try again.

Ok, guess I have some problem with reading full articles versus diagonal reading, so every once in a while this kinda things happen to me.
If you're like me and missed where the account (change shortname and home folder - 3rd option) had to be admin, and thought 'why to create another account if I already have Guest', when you 'sudo mv' you get the 'Sorry, try again.' (or as I called it, the 'better luck next time') message, don't worry, not everything is lost:

So, basically you did everything right until you open the Terminal. Then...

mac:~ Guest$ sudo mv /Users/oldshortname /Users/newshortname
Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
Sorry, try again.
sudo: 3 incorrect password attempts

sucks. I know.
If you try to simply 'su', it will return an 'su: Sorry?' after entering the password.

Well, just restart your Mac in single-user mode. (restart, keep pressing command+s, and when you see letters on your screen terminal style you'll know you're on the right track)

In single-user mode your keyboard, no matter what the layout, will be set to english keyboard layout.

At this point your file system is read-only.
To go on read/write type:

mac# /sbin/mount -uw /
mac#

then
mac# sudo mv /Users/oldshortname /Users/newshortname

and it's done.

Type 'reboot' and login on Mac OS X normally.

P.S. - If you have VMWare Fusion, it won't find your virtual machine image. Delete the machines on VM's library, then click 'open' and add them manually. Fusion will ask you if you copied the VM or if you moved it. Select 'moved it'.

[ted939]

Hi Dan - thanks much for your help in this issue!
I'm having a problem at the Terminal stage. I do the sudo mv command, just as you wrote it, but when it asks me for the password, it tells me that the account I'm logged in under "is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported."
As you instructed, I logged out of my home/main/admin account (the one that I want to change the shortname and User folder name), logged in under another account ("skat", which is Danish for "dear" or "babe"). Then, when I get to the Terminal stage to enter the password, I enter in skat's password ("krollebolle"), and it gives that error message: "skat is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported."
Note: I also tried entering in the password for the home/main/admin account, and it says, "Sorry, try again."
What to do?



LATER NOTE: okay, got it. My problem was that I wasn't logged into an Admin account. I missed that
part. Thanks to a couple of earlier Commenters for pointing that out. I was logged in to an account that didn't have "Allow user to administer this computer" checked in Sys Prefs > Accounts. I checked that box, then went through the directions (for the "Full Monty" version, by the way), and all worked well.

As Dan suggested might happen, one of my apps (LightRoom) was lost without the oldusername on the home folder, so I just redirected it to the newusername folder, and it seemed to work fine. I haven't tried any other apps yet, but my fingers are crossed.
Message was edited by: ted939

[KnOwMaN]

I tried the full monty, everything works ok except for one: The public folder. At the sharing, the current user's public folder is removed. I could add it in but it will be just named as public instead of User's public folder. Any idea how to change the name?