Changing the "Home" name

Hi!

I'm a bit of a newb here. I just got my Power Mac G4 "Sawtooth" from Adopt-a-Mac.com back in June. I love it to death! But, because it is used, (there are scratches on the outside, and there was a spiderweb above the disc drive and in between the zip drive and the disc drive), it was setup and sent to me, running Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11, with no disc. Well, in the Finder, where the Home icon is, it doesn't say "Home" or anything else. It just says adoptamac. I want to change that properly, since it seems that when I just change it manually, some of my applications and files (luckily I back up the system) were erased . I've changed the computer name, I want to change the Home name as well. And does anyone know where I can get a disc of Mac OS X Leopard? That's my next priority once I get a larger IDE harddrive, or a harddrive controller and a few SATA's plus a new CPU that's faster.;D

(Eventually I'll get a brand new Mac, but that's going to be a ways off for the time being.)

Leopard in its native form will not run on a Sawtooth as it calls for an 867MHz processor or faster, and Sawtooths are limited to 350, 400, 450 and 500MHz processors. Adding a faster processors, SATA Controller Card, SATA drive etc will cost far, far more than the machine is worth. You will be looking at about $500/600 and you can buy a respectable G5 for that much.

If you have a decent amount of memory be happy with Tiger OS X.4.11 and look at eBay to get a Tiger disc, making sure you only buy a black coloured full retail install DVD, if the machine has a DVD/Combo drive.

harryb2448 said:

Leopard in its native form will not run on a Sawtooth as it calls for an 867MHz processor or faster, and Sawtooths are limited to 350, 400, 450 and 500MHz processors. Adding a faster processors, SATA Controller Card, SATA drive etc will cost far, far more than the machine is worth. You will be looking at about $500/600 and you can buy a respectable G5 for that much.

If you have a decent amount of memory be happy with Tiger OS X.4.11 and look at eBay to get a Tiger disc, making sure you only buy a black coloured full retail install DVD, if the machine has a DVD/Combo drive.

Click to expand...

I know that Leopard will not run on anything as slow as what I've got (which is why I'm upgrading the processor and processor card, based on what I have seen as third-party. I'm thinking of buying a G5 motherboard as well).

-I know that the cost of all of what I've got planned is almost as much as a G5.- The reason I want to upgrade to Leopard (which is possible on a G4 Power Mac) is because what I normally use on a PC is available for Leopard, not Tiger.

Thanks for the advice though!

How do you change the Home name? (Finder->Home)

It currently says "adoptamac" and not "Home". How do I change that properly? When I go to manually change it (right click), and restart it, it erases most of my downloaded applications.

Not good changing Home folder name as it leads to all sorts of complications within the system. When you format the drive and install a new operating system it will be name Home automatically. Here is some further advice:-

Problem changing home folder name - Mac Forums

harryb2448 said:

Not good changing Home folder name as it leads to all sorts of complications within the system. When you format the drive and install a new operating system it will be name Home automatically. Here is some further advice:-

Problem changing home folder name - Mac Forums

Click to expand...

I Googled the idea, and found something on Apple's Support website. It says to go into root user mode, password it, and then some other things. I'm only a little familiar with how Mac OS X functions, but what a nightmare if anything goes wrong!

Looks like I'll have to do more Mac OS X studying here..then I'll get to changing this. Why adoptamac did this is beyond me, and why they couldn't let the customer setup Tiger..irritating. I've set up Mac's before, but what Apple's site says how to do this the proper way..confusing. Looks like I'll have to print it out.

Chris H. said:

How do you change the Home name? (Finder->Home) It currently says "adoptamac" and not "Home". How do I change that properly? When I go to manually change it (right click), and restart it, it erases most of my downloaded applications.

Click to expand...

That is the "short name" of your user account - rather than attempt to rename it, why not simply create a new user account with administrative privileges? You will then need to move any user-specific files from the "adoptamac" directory that you want to keep. Once you have done that you can delete the old user account.

Good Luck!

+1 for new admin acct / scrap old acct

I advise you, don't you change your Home folder name, because it will make to bed effect within the system. When you format the drive and install a new operating system it will be name Home automatically. But it's up to you.

Yeesh. Scary. I like my system as it is (though I think because Adopt-A-Mac named it "adoptamac"), I think something may be screwy in the OS that I'm not seeing, mainly because this is my first time using a Mac. I guess I'll have to hunt for a full retail disc of Tiger. Anybody have any ballpark estimates? And when I do get a full retail disc, what should I do before I use it?

Tiger runs at $60-$100 generally. When you get your black coloured full retail install DVD, as Tiger on CDs are very scarce so hope a DVD reader is in stalled, pop the disc in and reboot, holding down 'C' immediately after the chimes.

When the install window opens, go to utilities and select Disk Utility and hit Erase. The Apple Partition Map, even if a single partition is your choice, then format Mac OS Extended. Then select Repair Disk and run that, back to the Installer and proceed with Tiger.

I hope the machine is not also Firmware Password Protected which shows this type of icon:-

Setting up firmware password protection in Mac OS X


If it is take it back as nothing will work!

harryb2448 said:

Tiger runs at $60-$100 generally. When you get your black coloured full retail install DVD, as Tiger on CDs are very scarce so hope a DVD reader is in stalled, pop the disc in and reboot, holding down 'C' immediately after the chimes.

When the install window opens, go to utilities and select Disk Utility and hit Erase. The Apple Partition Map, even if a single partition is your choice, then format Mac OS Extended. Then select Repair Disk and run that, back to the Installer and proceed with Tiger.

I hope the machine is not also Firmware Password Protected which shows this type of icon:-


If it is take it back as nothing will work!

Click to expand...

My Power Mac has a DVD drive, and wow, I thought the black Tiger disc was cheaper than that. Well I was wrong!

So, based on what I'm interpreting here, I'll have to back up my files?

And I don't have my Mac password protected by any means, mainly because if I forget the password or if something goes wrong, I won't know what to do! Hee hee..

But this is the last time I buy from Adopt-A-Mac because they didn't say anything about what they did before I ordered it or before they shipped it out. Which means they could've done ANYTHING and I wouldn't know what! Irritating..which is why when and if I buy a used Mac (be it iBook, PowerBook, MacBook/MBP or iMac) I will ask if there is the original OS disc..I'll want to do what I want with my computer.

Yes however I thought they were erased in post 1?

Did you scroll down the above link to the blue picture and does the lock look like what you are seeing?

harryb2448 said:

Yes however I thought they were erased in post 1?

Did you scroll down the above link to the blue picture and does the lock look like what you are seeing?

Click to expand...

Some of them get erased when I right click on the Home icon and manually change the name. Upon reboot, everything is back to where it was before, with some things gone, some things still remaining. I'm back to where I want it, which is why I asked if I had to back up everything before I use the disc. I still back up everything anyways, but..when I'll go to use the disc, it seems that I will have to backup everything again, and do what your instructions say to do.

I've never seen that picture before..so??? I did read the article though. Very confusing.

Okay, I will add that I am an administrator on my Power Mac, according to System Pref>Accounts>Password. But I won't add a password, and my short name is grayed out so I can't edit it. So, reviewing my options here:

1) Do what Apple's website says about this:Mac OS X: How to change user short name or home directory name

2) Buy black Tiger disc

and either option I'll still have to backup everything (since I've been doing a lot of homework assignments lately on my Mac..I wish the school used Mac's !)

Which is better? OS X disc?