HELP! Enabling root user set my entire iMac back to factory settings?

I wanted to change the name of my home folder on my iMac so I went to the apple support site and they told me to enable the root user, log in as that then change the folder name in /Users, log out as root then log back in as normal user. I did this and it has completely set my mac back to its factory settings, I have literaly lost everything. How on earth do I fix this as it took me months to set that mac up to how I wanted it, it's even asking me to re-register my Microsoft office and everything?

At the moment I am running time machine and I have gone back to my last back up and clicked '***y's iMac and then restore. It is now copying 220,000 items to volumes. Was this the right thing to do, or am I still going to lose all of my settings, and for the love of God why did this happen?

You did something that you were not supposed to do. For starters, you should never enable the root user unless you know exactly what you are doing. Secondly, you can't simply rename your home folder. There is a way to do it, but the way you did it is not it. Whatever that advice was that you read was either dead wrong, or you simply misunderstood it.

It's a bit more complex than just logging on as Root and changing the home folder. It involves several more steps. As lifeisabeach stated you probably missed something along the way.

Here is the article he referred to: LINK

It should be mentioned that your original Home folder is probably still there, just with the name you changed it to.

It's ok I fixed it lt last night finally, I missed an important point in the list from the apple site, I forgot to create a user with the same name as the newly named home folder, once I did that and logged in as it that everything was there sitting waiting for me.

Phew!

And to the person who said I shouldn't mess unless I know what I am doing, how am I going to know what I am doing unless I mess with it haha! 15 years of windows is hard to undo without practice!

dennyc123 said:

And to the person who said I shouldn't mess unless I know what I am doing, how am I going to know what I am doing unless I mess with it haha!

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He's got a point there. Some of us learn by doing -- the hard way sometimes.

dennyc123 said:

And to the person who said I shouldn't mess unless I know what I am doing, how am I going to know what I am doing unless I mess with it haha! 15 years of windows is hard to undo without practice!

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That actually is my philosophy. I used to have a dual boot setup of OS X just to experiment on or use to try and recreate and solve a problem someone here may have. At least you had a backup available in the form of Time Machine. Most people who go tinkering and wind up here don't have anything to fall back on.

Dude, you must be the one!

I was messing with an issue with the short user name and tried to access the Apple KB on the issue, and it won't let me in!

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1428?viewlocale=null&locale=null

The home folder does look like any old folder, so why shouldn't you be able to change it? I can see how someone might get sucked into making a Big Mistake.