Need your help with a conundrum

Hey guys so heres the thing.. I wanted to change my home name on my iMac, had great difficulty and followed a tutorial online and things went horribly awry. while logged in as Joshua (admin) i went to system pref --- login options --- network account server --- join---edit -- enable root--- logged out and then in as root -- went to finder --- devices -- iMac --- macintosh HD --- users -- changed the folder name to Josh --- logged out thinking everything was fine-- logged back in as Joshua and it was as if it was a new user all my files were gone, apps are still there. files are still on computer if i look in spotlight but they're under the user Josh which isn't listed under users in system pref, and i cannot log into it. any ideas?

much appreciation,
Josh

Log out and log back in as ROOT. Change it back to the way it was before and then log out as ROOT and see if you can log in with your old name again. If everything is normal, post back and we'll show you how to change your name without messing things up.

ok brilliant. I got it back to normal =). thanks for the help wasn't sure if just changing the name back would work or if it'd make things worse. I would greatly appreciate it if you could tell me how to change the home name though.

I would greatly appreciate it if you could tell me how to change the home name though.

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OK, great. Glad things are back to normal. Let's try this:

Log in as Joshua. Create a new account, assign it admin privileges, and name it "Josh". Copy (don't move) everything from Joshua to Josh. Log off Joshua and log on to Josh. After you have verified that everything (applications and settings) are working OK in Josh, you can remove Joshua.

Before removing Joshua, make sure you can log on to Josh and that the password is working OK. Reboot a few times and try it out.

Also, it's always a good idea to make backups. Use Time Machine and an external drive. Play it safe.

perfect! thanks a lot man. I actually did have my important stuff backed up which is why i wasn't running around screaming when i thought I might have lost it all.

thank you for the help

thtguyjosh said:

perfect! thanks a lot man. I actually did have my important stuff backed up which is why i wasn't running around screaming when i thought I might have lost it all.

thank you for the help

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Gotta love that quote. it should be at the bottom of the new Backup Sticky.