What did I do?!

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With the HD folder open I decided to rename the User folder on the left. I control clicked it, Got Info, & changed the name.
When I closed the Get Info popup screen it created a new folder, named after the name I had just typed. This folder has ALL of my stuff in it! Documents, widgets, settings, everything! How do I get things back to the way they were?
S.
:radioacti
 
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Someone had a similar problem to yours not too long ago. Check out this thread
 
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I appreciate the reply & the link. That guy did the same thing i did...
Unfortunately it is no help.
I can see that ive basically just split up my files & will need to copy them back. Any that wont copy will have to be reloaded...
I dont think I lost anything anyways & all the pics, music & movies are still in the right place.
S.
 
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First of all - welcome to Mac Forums sharp21! You will find this place to be a great resource, a great place of learning and sharing, and just an all around great place!

Now, onto your issue. It would appear that you have committed one of the cardinal sins in Mac land. This is one of the few places I am aware of where Mac OS X does not react gracefully.

My advice would be create an entirely new userid, and consolidate everything onto this new account. Use this new ID from here on out and delete the older ones once you have saved all the data from there.

If you get any "insufficient permission" type errors that stop you from doing the copy of files from the old IDs to the new ones, please post back here, or drop me a private message, and I will walk you through the sometimes painful process of overriding the userid protections that are blocking you.
 
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Really, this happens often enough that the OS should prevent it. If changing the user folder name is this drastically problematic, either it should be protected or at the very least require some kind of warning notification and Admin privileges to make the change.
 
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Everything is well messed up. My AdminAccount-Sharp21 is the only user that shows, but my when I open the HD it shows the old name of the account!
Trying to reload music & pics, they are saving under the user not in the pic & music folders..
Isnt there a way in Tiger to reload all of yesterdays settings?
S.
 
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So do you now have 2 user folders, one with your stuff and one without? The easiest way to fix it is like this (assume my username is 'cazabam' but I decided to change it to 'monkey'. OS X automatically created a new, empty 'cazabam' folder):

*Open Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
*type `cd /Users` and press <enter>
*type `mv cazabam cazabam.old` and press <enter>
*type `mv monkey cazabam` and press <enter>

Log out and log back in and all should be well.
 
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I'll be interested to see if that works cazabam - good job. I thought I was the only one foolish enough to prescribe corrections via Terminal! :)

Seriously though, based on what I have read in other posts of similar problems, I believe that sharp21 may now encounter permission based problems with accessing his/her files. If so, we will need to go in with any combination of the chown, chmod and potentially the pax command sets to set things to rights.

I want to get specific details on the issues that sharp21 encounters however before deciding the best set of voodoo to fix it!
 
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mac57 where were you when X11 went belly up for me - you would have sorted things out right away!
 
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So do you now have 2 user folders, one with your stuff and one without? The easiest way to fix it is like this (assume my username is 'cazabam' but I decided to change it to 'monkey'. OS X automatically created a new, empty 'cazabam' folder):

*Open Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
*type `cd /Users` and press <enter>
*type `mv cazabam cazabam.old` and press <enter>
*type `mv monkey cazabam` and press <enter>

Log out and log back in and all should be well.

You will also need to type (after the above, enter your password when prompted):
sudo chown -R monkey:monkey cazabam/

This will change the permissions for the folder to match yours.
 
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Pulse-8, sorry, I seem to have missed that! Let me know if you have any *more* problems with X11! :dive:
 
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You will also need to type (after the above, enter your password when prompted):
sudo chown -R monkey:monkey cazabam/

This will change the permissions for the folder to match yours.

No, not so. Don't forget that the 'monkey' user doesn't exist - it's just a name I arbitrarily renamed my home folder to. My username would still be 'cazabam', and I would have a new, empty User folder called 'cazabam' too. Both the 'cazabam' and 'monkey' folders would be accessible to me.

I know this works because I tried it. I renamed my own home folder and put it back using the exact instructions I posted above.
 

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