iTunes deleted when changing home account via root. Help!

OK, so I am a mac newbie. I purchased an imac from a friend and the home directory shortname still has his name on it. After adding itunes to the computer and all my songs from an external hd and fiddling around for hours with artwork etc. I decided I wanted to get his name off of the home directory menu and replace it with mine (genius, right?!). I already had changed the admin account name via the user settings (so my name now appeared as the admin. account name, but I didn;t change the actual home directory shortname which still had his name), so I first tried the following method to change the home directory. I had no luck OS X: How to change user account name or home directory name.

At one point I got scared because I thought I got locked out of the pc, but luckily I got back in when I restarted with no changes being made to anything on the mac at all (his name was still there in home directory, all my software was still intact, including my itunes files).

I then found someone else's plan to go to a terminal app and use some "sudo" command to change the home directory account name. I simply followed the directions that were laid out. When I did that, it basically restarted my mac and when I logged back in, all of my itunes files that I had worked forever on organizing etc. were gone (itunes was if it was just installed anew). Luckily I have all my music saved on an external hd. In addition, a lot of the preferences and app settings were as if they were set back to default, and even though I thought I lost all of the software that was installed like Office, luckily they were still in the apps folder, but not set up in the dock as they were prior. The problem was, the home directory menu was STILL under his name.

So I went through the painful process of again reinstalling all my music and importing artwork etc (I stupidly did not save it all to the hd after I did it the last time before I started "tinkering" with the home directory name) and it took hours upon hours since I had over 5000 songs I needed to get sorted correctly etc. So now my question is...is there anything I can do in order to change the home directory shortname from his name to mine without having to worry about all the itunes data/changes or any of the software programs on there that were on it when I bought it (office, adobe, etc) getting deleted/changed???

Remember, I'm a newbie, so getting all technical will be lost on me. I need basic steps. Thanks in advance! In the grand scheme of things, is it really worth the trouble of me changing the shortname or should I just leave it be so I don't delete something major or that will take even more hours to fix, if it can be fixed at all??

First things first, what version of OS X is running on this iMac and did you get the original discs for it? If not and this is pre-Lion, then you should first get the discs from your friend. Then, either use the discs and erase the HD and do a clean install of OS X and go from there..

It is a shame that your friend didn't do this before selling you the machine, especially if you are new to Macs..

This is a mid 2011 imac running Mountain Lion. Is there anything else that can be done aside from doing a clean wipe of the system? I say that because I want to be able to keep Office and Adobe etc on there if possible. That's my major issue. If it weren't for those programs that I want to be able to use, I would have probably done that restore. Thanks

Ahh, as Bobtomay responded in your other thread, unless you were given the discs for Office and other software, you are using it illegally and we can't help you with that.

I completely understand. I wasn't aware of that originally. I just figured that the software travelled with the computer. Obviously, not the smartest of people when it comes to buying a used computer, but when I had done a lot of searches of imacs for sale (ebay etc), I often saw people selling used macs with lots of the same software and figured it was ok. Thanks for clarifying. Looks like a wipe may be the only option

This is causing a lot of grief for a lot of people as we transition from installing software through DVD's or standalone DVD's to getting them through the Mac App Store..

With the former method, people could leave the apps on the machines and just give you the serial number or DVDs to make it a legal sale (most of the stuff on eBay is NOT this and totally illegally FYI)..but with the MAS purchases, the iCloud/Apple IDs are coming into the picture and clouding up the issue. Now if Apple provided a way to do a one time transfer of apps from one iCloud account to another as part of a "purchase" then that would most likely take care of this issue..but Apple hasn't addressed this yet..

Though, I imagine that as more and more apps go to the MAS and their own direction of removing optical drives from their new computers, they will HAVE to address this issue one way or another and provide some useful solution for legal sale of Macs and their apps..

That all makes sense. I appreciate the clarification.