Cloning, Renaming Home, Permissions, File Extension Problems

[greenfrog5]

I work at an office that runs 6 Macs and they wanted them reorganized since the Home, HD and Sharing names were nondescript, unclear and often too similar to be useful. The boss had cloned most of the machines from each other, which I am not directly familiar with (I understand the concept, but have never done it myself).

In standardizing the names of all the computers, I followed Apple's directions to change the Home name (I know it isn't recommended, etc: enable root, login as root, rename Home folder, create new user to match name, etc). This seemed to work fine on the first machine, though there were a few permission issues (folders/files with do-not-enter signs on the icons). These were easily fixed by adding a permission for Administrators and making all permissions Read/Write. I did, however use capitol letters in the Home Names - will this actually create a problem? It would be much better if I can use the capitol letters, otherwise the names become difficult to read/distinguish. My question here is will capitol letters actually cause problems in the Home name? (I have a MBP which had a capitol letter in this name without issue, though Apple does say all lower-case, no spaces, etc).

File Permissions
Each machine has a single login which has Admin privileges and is always used. My question about permissions, is why setting the permission for 'everyone' to Read/Write isn't enough to gain access to these files? I need to add a new one for 'Administrators' which is Read/Write to gain access. Is it safe to apply this permission in bulk (using the option "apply to enclosed items")? As far as I know, there are no security issues here in the office, he wants all files accessible from all computers and users, etc... I would assume granting Admins full permission would be better than just 'This User' so that access to these files from all the computers is full R/W? Or should I be setting R/W to just 'This User' (the specific Admin account I'm logged into?)

Weird HD>Utilities folder
After changing the Home names, we noticed that on the main HD are 2 folders: Utilities and Utility Apps. These contain the regular utilities, and any utilities/programs he added (CarbonCopy, DragThing, etc). All of the icons here have the do-not-enter sign, and do not open with the error "You can't open XXX because it isn't supported on this architecture". Changing permissions does not resolve the do-not-enter sign, but it does remove the warning (though the programs then just fail to open). At first, he thought this was my fault (from changing the Home names, etc), but I figured out that the one computer he didn't clone doesn't have these folders, so I assume it is from the cloning, or something he did previously (the folders have dates 2 years old). As I'm typing this, I'm wondering if these are left-over things from a pre-Intel machine he originally ported/cloned stuff from? (thus the 'not supported architecture' warning?) As far as I can tell, the regular Utilities in the Applications folder all work fine. My question is can I just delete these two folders? Will I have permission issues to do this? (I can go to terminal if necessary, though am only moderately familiar)

File Extensions
I assume this part is a result of the change of Home, but a few file extensions have lost their application association (so far I've noticed .mcd = VectorWorks file and .doc too). These files all show with a terminal icon and it tries to open them there. I have set the file extension to 'Open With' Vectorworks 'for all files of this type' which works fine, except the icons still show the terminal logo. New mcd files that are created or saved show the correct icon. My question is is there a way to repair the icons that it shows for this file extension? It seems that most 'standard' file extensions are still fine (pdf, txt, etc). I'm not sure why just the mcd (and probably some other specialized ones) got screwed up? Also, since Macs don't require file extensions, there are some files that don't have them and show the terminal window. I don't know what type of file they are, so short of guessing, is there a way to actually tell (OSX thinks they are generic UNIX files, thus the terminal icon)

Thank you so much for any help or direction with these. I've been searching online and have found very little that is directly relevant to my issues.

Aaron