System restore - login problems and loss of some data

L

lloyd99

Registered
I idiotically changed my short name and didn't think through the ramfications, which are very problematic...

The next time I booted up my macbook pro (OSX) it was a virgin desktop just like on day 1. All my aliases had gone, all the programmes had gone back to their origins, i.e. Itunes was empty and was at the registration process, the mail program was empty of all data, so I'm in a fix.

The data, I believe, is still on the laptop, as my hardrive is still saying it is as full as previously.

But

1) can I restore my mac to a previous point ? i.e before my error? So I dodn't have to rebuild programs and data?

2) If not, where would my mail data reside and how do I get it back into my mail programme? (I use the mac provided mail program)

3) Is there any way of recovering the itunes data such as playlists and rankings etc.

I feel an idiot, assistance gratefully appreciated.

Thanks.
 
*HOW* did you change your shortname? OS X doesn't allow you to change your shortname through the interface. Here is the instructions on properly changing your shortname:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106824

Now... if you changed the shortname of your home directory - in /Users and that's ALL you did - its simple to get back. Log on as another user, and rename the new directory to a temporary name, then rename the old directory back to its original name.

So if your username was 'Blah Blah' and your shortname was 'blah', then you'd originally had a home directory in /Users/blah/

If you renamed /Users/blah to /users/blahblah, then the next time you logged in, it'd recreate the 'virgin desktop' again and create a whole new directory structure for you in /Users/blah. Your original files would still be safe and sound in /Users/blahblah.

From a terminal window then,
cd /Users
mv blah blah.old
mv blahblah blah

Would essentially restore the original account.
 
Thanks very much, I shall try that.

I actually changed the short name in the 'Get info' box of the original shortname. I had intially typed the wrong short name when setting up the mac a few months ago and it had always irritated.

Thanks again, I'll tell you what happens.
 
My instructions should fix it then.

Follow the instructions on the link I provided (to apple's site) to change your shortname and preserve your account settings.
 
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