users/ I think I broke my imac on the first day

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becstarr

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Hey All,

I received a imac from a friend for some work I did for him, His name was all over the users on the machine...I think I might have broken the mac, when I removed the user and added a new one. Now, I have have no HD come up on restart on the desktop, when I make changes like to the dock etc, they are reverted back when I resart.

Any help on resetting the users or something would be greatly appreaciated.

Imac 500HMZ, CD burner
mac os 10.2.4

Woops and thanks in advance

Becstarr
 
I don't have an Apple yet so I can not say too much. But I dont think you broke it. Can you format Macs? If yes you might do that and install the computer again with Macintosh.


Folks we need help ... come on help ...

PLEASE HELP
 
Thanks for the reply, but a reformat is a last option.. I won't learn how to fix things if i just reformat everytime things break.....

Any other ideas would be great than resinstall and reformat :)

Thanks
 
what exactly did you do? did you manually delete the user file with your friends name and manually replace it with a different folder? That might not go well... Do you have the original OS X cd's? You could completely format and fresh install the operating system, but everything on the computer now would get lost... Or try the restore cd's...
 
Things like no hard-drive on desktop is a preference. In the finder go to preferences. I'm not sure about the dock. Just make sure that you add an un-launched app to the dock. They'll show up there when you launch an app but they wont' stay there unless you add them un-launched. Does that make since?
 
My personal opinion is that I would usually try to fix things first, but since you got this iMac second-hand, you should really reformat everything anyway. Doing this will remove any problems that might have arisen from the previous owner, and will give you an 'as new' system to start with.
Anyway, just my idea :)
 
Thanks for the ideas,

I removed the user in the users prefference, I have checked the finder preferences and they are all ok ... I get normal operation when I am logged in as root. But when I log in as the user it all goes weird... Like I have locked out changes that can be made as the user.

Very weird....

Any other ideas?

becstarr
 
Like I said, you could probably fight this for a while, and maybe eventually fix it, but I still think your best bet is to start with a fresh system (i.e. reinstall).
I just think this would be simpler! :)
Anyway, just my idea.
 
Unfortunatley I am incredible stubborn when it comes to fixing a problem, would rather try everything before reformat .... that is soooo windows .. yuck!!!

lol

Becstarr
 
Just make a new user (not manually, but with the system preferences application) and give it administative ranking, then log in with that user and delete the other users.
 
Yes, I can tell that you are stubborn ;)
Anyhow, what I was trying to say is that I personally would want to reformat my computer if I bought it used so that I would have an "as new" computer to work with from the start.
If you are really against reformatting, then Decado's suggestion is a good one, just log in under root, create a new Admin user (I like to also create a backup user with Administrative access. I found this out the hard way :)), and then back up the files of the other user(s) and delete them.
 
Originally posted by dlloyd
Yes, I can tell that you are stubborn ;)
Anyhow, what I was trying to say is that I personally would want to reformat my computer if I bought it used so that I would have an "as new" computer to work with from the start.
Click to expand...

I agree. There are too many funky things that can have already been done incorrectly, not just your deletion of a user.

You have a burner, back up anything you need. Reinstall X and put everything you need back again.

I get normal operation when I am logged in as root.
Click to expand...

Do you mean there is a user named Root? FWIU that is not a good idea, more reason to reinstall, stubborn or not.
 
i agree with dlloyd. i'd format the mac if it was mine. that way i'd have it clean, and with my custom installations. :)
 
The first thing you should do is attempt to fix the permissions. To do this, launch from an OSX install disk and then select disk utility fron the file menu rather than continuing with the install. from there select your volume and then the "First Aid" tab at the top of the disk utility screen and then select "Repair Disk Permissions"
 
Thanks for all the tips,

I went home did as you guys suggested and added a new account, logged in as that one ... then deleted user.. same issue ...


ARRRGggghhhhh i hate formating ... so I did and everything is as it should be ...

Thanks for the tips...... All fixed now

:) Becstarr
 
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