What have I done????
Need some help from more experienced Apple users than I (i.e. everyone).
I just got my first Apple, an ibook, the other week, and installed Jaguar. Then today I decided to rename my hard-drive icon. Didn't cause any problems until I shut down. Upon restarting, all of my preferences were gone, and most importantly, my Address Book and Mail content were missing.
Here is where I renamed it: after opening the dektop icon for the hard-drive, I went into the 'users' folder, and renamed the icon with the little home symbol.
When the computer was restarted later in the day, it came up with the generic blue blackground, my dock settings and extra icons had been erased, and all preferences for all programs had been forgotten. For example, when I opened Mail, it asked me to sign up my acocunt all over again. My Address Book is empty, Internet Explorer shortcuts are gone, and etc etc etc.
I hope/think there is a simple solution to this, but I am still figuring out Apples, and am lost. I want very much to be a happy "switcher" and here is your chance to ensure that!
Any clues on how to restore my computer preferences and Address Book and Mail content? Renaming the hard-drive to the original name and restarting had no effect. I tried a couple of times to make sure it wasn't case-sensitive.
Thank you very much.
[ 10-25-2002: Message edited by: Drew Vankat ]</p>
I just got my first Apple, an ibook, the other week, and installed Jaguar. Then today I decided to rename my hard-drive icon. Didn't cause any problems until I shut down. Upon restarting, all of my preferences were gone, and most importantly, my Address Book and Mail content were missing.
Here is where I renamed it: after opening the dektop icon for the hard-drive, I went into the 'users' folder, and renamed the icon with the little home symbol.
When the computer was restarted later in the day, it came up with the generic blue blackground, my dock settings and extra icons had been erased, and all preferences for all programs had been forgotten. For example, when I opened Mail, it asked me to sign up my acocunt all over again. My Address Book is empty, Internet Explorer shortcuts are gone, and etc etc etc.
I hope/think there is a simple solution to this, but I am still figuring out Apples, and am lost. I want very much to be a happy "switcher" and here is your chance to ensure that!
Any clues on how to restore my computer preferences and Address Book and Mail content? Renaming the hard-drive to the original name and restarting had no effect. I tried a couple of times to make sure it wasn't case-sensitive.
Thank you very much.
[ 10-25-2002: Message edited by: Drew Vankat ]</p>
Comments
<strong>
Here is where I renamed it: after opening the dektop icon for the hard-drive, I went into the 'users' folder, and renamed the icon with the little home symbol.
[ 10-25-2002: Message edited by: Drew Vankat ]</strong><hr></blockquote>
I am not quite sure I understand your whole story there, but that little home icon is not your hard drive but rather your home directory. The mac looks for your preferences in there. OS X is really designed to allow more than one person to use the same computer and let each person have there own preferences and stuff. It knows which preferences to be using by looking at the name of the person who is logged in and then looking under Users for that persons directory to find their preferences. If it looks at who is logged in and doesn't find a corresponding directory... well I guess you are doing that experiment now and from the looks of things, I don't think I want to try it. I would think that renaming that house icon (if it still looks like a house, it might look like a regular folder now) and logging out and back in should fix things. However I don't think I will be experimenting on my own machine. Sorry.
Welcome to the mac. Hopefully things will get better from here.
Rename your home folder back to what it was, and it *might* work... I have a funny feeling there may be some NetInfo majick that needs to be performed at this point. I suggest getting a goat ready.
some info about home directory:
<a href="http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106167"; target="_blank">here</a>
and <a href="http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106824&SaveKCWindowURL=http: %2F%2Fkbase.info.apple.com%2Fcgi-bin%2FWebObjects%2Fkbase.woa%2Fwa%2FSaveKCToHomePa ge&searchMode=Expert&kbhost=kbase.info.apple.com&s howButton=false&randomValue=100&showSurvey=false&s essionID=anonymous|156407125" target="_blank">here</a>
[ 10-25-2002: Message edited by: thegelding ]</p>
For that matter, HOW did you change it?
Please don't say you used that evil root account.
-alcimedes
[ 10-25-2002: Message edited by: thegelding ]</p>
nope, i tried that too. i have no idea how this happened the way it says. unless he was logged in as root 24/7
<strong>now if you go to "user" and then right click the "house" and click on "get info" and then click on the triangle next to "Name & Extension:" it looks like you can change the name of your home directory.....</strong><hr></blockquote>Yes, but unless you change the default permissions on the /Users directory or use root, you still *can't* change the name of any of its contents, namely the user's home folder. (alcimedes beat me to this one, you devil!)
There are three possibilities here:
1. He logged in the GUI as root to change it.
2. He su'd to root or sudo mv'd the directory in the Terminal.
3. He changed permissions on the /Users directory so he could rename his home.
Number one is a TERRIBLE thing to do. You should NEVER log in the actual GUI as root unless you are an expert on Mac OS X and know precisely what the consequences are.
Number two would assume he has a good working knowledge of a UNIX command line. This may be possible, but I would think that having knowledge of UNIX would mean also knowing that UNIX system often rely on hard-coded paths and that things so haywire when they are moved.
Number three seems the most likely. Yet, even *this* would require pretty good knowledge of the Finder to figure out.
Of course, all this guessing gets us nowhere. We need to know *exactly* what was done here.
[ 10-25-2002: Message edited by: Brad ]</p>
<img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />
Jeff
if you don't hear back from me, don't try it too.
you can change the permissions. after that, you can also change the name of the folder.
when you do that, everything (as stated above) is still fine.
however, when you reboot, OSX will recreate a Users folder using your login name as the default. here's what you need to do.
rename the new "Users" folder something else. (Junk) would be a good one.
now find the folder that you renamed earlier. RENAME that folder "Users"
now, get info on the folder and change the permissions back to System.
the Junk folder can get tossed. restart your machine and everything should be back to normal.
<strong>Windows makes you look at things in strange ways...
<img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>
It's scary how much this discussion sounds like Windows troubleshooting. Just in time for Halloween.
Boo!
And kudos to alcimedes for figuring out Drew Vankat's problem.
Escher
[ 10-25-2002: Message edited by: Escher ]</p>
<strong>
There are three possibilities here:
1. He logged in the GUI as root to change it.
2. He su'd to root or sudo mv'd the directory in the Terminal.
3. He changed permissions on the /Users directory so he could rename his home.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
4. Someone wants to make trouble. What better way to get a bunch of Mac nerds to render their machines unusable.
thanks for all the replies.
here is exactly what i did:
1. double-clicked on the dard-drive icon on the desktop.
2. opened the "users" folder
3. clicked on the little icon with the house symbol.
4. clicked again so i could edit the name
5. changed the name
6. continued using my computer
7. shut down, and later in the day restarted
8. when i restarted, it was more or less as if i was starting in Jaguar all over again. all prefs were gone.
also, maybe this will help:
when i now open the users folder, there is my renamed house symbol, then a regular folder icon with the original name that used to be on the house symbol. the third third and final icon is the "shared" folder.
hopefully that clarifies things.
not being so familiar with Macs, I don't think there is any way I was fooling around with all of the complex methods of changing names that people have suggested.
thanks again
drew
1. double-clicked on the dard-drive icon on the desktop.
2. opened the "users" folder
3. clicked on the little icon with the house symbol.
4. clicked again so i could edit the name
5. changed the name
6. continued using my computer
7. shut down, and later in the day restarted
8. when i restarted, it was more or less as if i was starting in Jaguar all over again. all prefs were gone.
also, maybe this will help:
when i now open the users folder, there is my renamed house symbol, then a regular folder icon with the original name that used to be on the house symbol. the third third and final icon is the "shared" folder.
hopefully that clarifies things.
not being so familiar with Macs, I don't think there is any way I was fooling around with all of the complex methods of changing names that people have suggested.<hr></blockquote>
here's the deal. normally you CAN'T do what you just described.
the folder "Users" is used by the system to track the different documents and settings for the differen users in OSX. in order to chnage the name of that folder, you need to do a "Get Info" on it, then change the permissions. before you can change the permissions, you need to enter in the admin password.
IF you change the permissions on the User folder, then you can rename the little house icon inside of it. if you DON'T change the User folder permissions, there's no way (outside of being root) to change the name.
i'm going to try what you described and see what happens, i think it will be the same thing, only in this case you'll want to toss the new house folder and just rename the old one back to what it was. (wait until i reply before doing this though) however, this raises an interesting question.
is there anyway to rename a user while keeping their settings if they're the only user on the machine? Brad?
i looked and didn't see anything.
find the folder with the house icon.
change the name to junk.
now find the folder you renamed.
change the name back to the username that had the house icon before. (what it was orginally)
then toss the junk folder.
now when you restart your machine everything should be back to normal.
now that it's back to normal, please do the following and let me know.
click on the users folder and do a "Get Info"
there should be a group labeled "Ownership & Permissions"
click on that and you should see something labeled "Owner"
what does it say there?
<strong>wow. this is insane!
thanks for all the replies.
here is exactly what i did:
1. double-clicked on the dard-drive icon on the desktop.
2. opened the "users" folder
3. clicked on the little icon with the house symbol.
4. clicked again so i could edit the name
5. changed the name
6. continued using my computer
7. shut down, and later in the day restarted
8. when i restarted, it was more or less as if i was starting in Jaguar all over again. all prefs were gone.
also, maybe this will help:
when i now open the users folder, there is my renamed house symbol, then a regular folder icon with the original name that used to be on the house symbol. the third third and final icon is the "shared" folder.
hopefully that clarifies things.
not being so familiar with Macs, I don't think there is any way I was fooling around with all of the complex methods of changing names that people have suggested.
thanks again
drew</strong><hr></blockquote>
Sounds like you renamed your 'home' directory. If your machine is set up for a single user (ie no login screen, boots straight into your account) then you SHOULD be able to rename the new 'home' folder, rename the old 'home' folder back to what it was, log out and back in, and trash the other. OR, you could go into your old home folder, copy the ~/Library/Preferences/ folder over to your new 'home' folder, and that should fix your preferences. Or you could find the individual Mail and Address Book prefs in said old Preferences folder and copy just those.
To those more experienced/wiser than I: If'n I'm talkin' outa my hiney, please feel free to put the smack-down on.
(tig)
Of course I'm logged in as the Admin account- but that makes sense cause Im the only person who uses this computer- so there only is an admin account.
And to my knowledge, Ive never dicked around with the permissions of my Users folder...
Yet theyre set to Owner = "system"...
strange.