Admin ain´t always Admin - Trouble after hd upgrade

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Pox

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I have some serious account issues, that I really hope someone can help me out with.

I run a PB 12" 1.33 Ghz with 10.5.2.

History
I have recently upgraded my hard drive. I cloned the old one with the latest Carbon Copy Cloner. Before cloning I run disk repair and permissions repair with Disk Utility. No problem anywhere.

Replaced the old disk with the new cloned one and everything seemed fine.

But after an hour I found that I now have some strange error, that seem to be permission related.

Problem
My account is an admin account. Working with system preferences I have no problem verifying that I am an admin. But when, as an example, I try to run Cocktail, after authorization Cocktail just says I entered the wrong username and/or password.

Another error is that Preview now can not open any documents. No error codes or anything; the app launches as it should, but when opening a file (trough open-dialog, drag-and-drop or what ever) nothing happens.

I have run Disk Utility as well at Drive Genius, but all I get is "acl found but not expected". I have never got that answer before, but according to Apple support pages this is a typical 10.5.2-message and nothing to worry about. But this is the only report of something different I can found!

I have created a new admin account that works flawless. No problem what so ever. Running Disk Utility gives the same result as above.

So... how do I solve this?

Now what?
Is there a quick super-fix that _really_ fixes my user accounts permissions?

Or is there a way to merge all my personal data (Mail, iPhoto, Keychain...) into a new working account?

I still have the old hard drive in a firewire cabinet; If I boot from that one, move over all the new files from the new internal drive to make sure I do not loose any data; is there a way to import this external account to the internal drive/system? Just like if I would have made a fresh install on the internal drive and during setup choose to import accounts from an external source; but without the hassle of doing a fresh install?!

Thank you for reading all of this!
 
Yep. Get your OS X install disk and boot with it. When the installer starts go to the menu items and look for Disk Utility. With Disk Utility you can fix the permissions and the disk reset the the master password (before you fix permissions).

Good Luck.
 
You should note that permissions repair does NOT descend into your home directory, so any permissions problems you encounter there will not be fixed by repairing permissions. It's possible that you also don't 'own' any of the files in your user folder, which can happen when your user files have been copied a couple of times. The easiest way to fix all that is to make sure you own everything in your home directory:
Open the terminal, and run this command:
sudo chown -R user /Users/user
change the 'user' to your own account name. That is the name of your user folder, or the 'short name'. Letter case is important here, -R is not the same as -r, and be careful of spaces.
Press enter, and enter your password when asked. (note that you won't see your password as you type it)
When the prompt returns - log out, then log back in as that same user.
 
My plan now is this:

  1. Save all new files from the corrupted account on a large USB-memory.
  2. Log into my new admin account.
  3. Delete the corrupted account completely using the user account system tool.
  4. Use the mac os Migration Tool to import the working account from the old hard drive using firewire.

What do I need to think of during this procedure? Anything special?
 
How about try an Archive & install but change your Admin password when ask too. This way you can pick & choose the data you want from the "Previous System" folder that is created during the Archive. This way you loose all your data. When you are done getting the data you want then you can throw away the Previous System folder.
 
I tried the scenario with deleting the account, and use mingration tool to import the old account from the external drive; same d**n error! :(

I guess archive and install is as good as anything right now.
 
Archive and install, and then import of the old account worked! :D

Finaly a sollution!

Thanks for all the help!
 
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