I changed the main (Administrator) User name in my System folder/Accounts and the "Short Name" is greyed out in that window, so I can't change it there.
Therefore, the User name that shows up in the Macintosh Hard Drive window is incorrect.
1) Open Macintosh HD
2) Open the Users folder
3) Change the name of the home folder by selecting it and then clicking on the name.
4) Log Out and back in to make sure everything works correctly.
Open the NetInfo Manager in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder, click the padlock, and type in your password. Next, locate your account in the list of accounts, and change the home property to point to the desired location of your account; don't alter or delete any other accounts, groups, or properties. To change your account's short name, see below. Once you've changed the NetInfo database, open the /Users/ folder in the Finder, change the name of the house icon, log out, and then log back in. If this has been done properly, your user data will appear under the new name. Changing the name of your home folder in the Finder without changing the home property will result in a new home folder being created with the default name, and your account will look like a brand new one.
To change the short name of your account, you need to update both your account's name property and the membership of the admin group. If you don't update the group's membership, you may find yourself in a situation where there are no administrator accounts on the machine.
Now my Administrator User does not show up as a log-in option. I now have two brand new users as log-in options (neither are set up with my applications in the Dock, my e-mail bookmarks aren't there, etc.)
If either of the two accounts you can log in as is able to access your original home folder, rename that account's current home folder to something else, and then rename the original home folder to the previous name of the empty one. If not, please post back and say exactly what you did, both in the NetInfo Manager and the Finder.
When I initially set up my computer I started out by setting up one user on my HD. This original user was named "casandrasilver".
I recently created another user and named it "jason". I did this by going into System Preferences/System/Accounts and here I added an account. I wanted "jason" to be the main user and "casandrasilver" to be the other account [for iTunes reasons] so in the same System Preferences/System/Accounts I changed the name to "jason". The "Short Name" in there was greyed out and could not be changed so I then posted my original question asking how to change that.
I then did as the first responder to my post suggested: 1) Open Macintosh HD
2) Open the Users folder 3) Change the name of the home folder by selecting it and then clicking on the name.------HERE IS WHERE I CHANGED THE FOLDER THAT SAID "casandrasilver" to "jason"------- 4) Log Out and back in to make sure everything works correctly.
Then I went in and did as you said, and as you said not to do, so sorry.
This is what I did: I opened the NetInfo Manager in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder, clicked the padlock, and typeed in my password. I then clicked on the "users" folder and changed everything under "Value(s)" that said "casandrasilver" to "jason".
Then I restarted and now I have two choices of users to log into. One user is "jason" but the home folder is named "casandrasilver" and the other is "casandra" and the home folder is named "casandra". (I didn't set up a user named just "casandra", this is baffling to me). They are both new accounts because the docks are fresh and the desktops are fresh and none of my folders that were on the original desktop show up, no iTunes or iMovies, etc.
I hope you can help.
Thank you so much for your responses so far.
Under the jason account, drag any application to the Dock, log out, and then log back in. If the item you placed in the Dock is still there, open the /Users/ folder on your hard disk and locate the folder which contains your user data; when found, drag the data to the folder inside /Users/ with the house icon.
If the item you dragged to the Dock isn't there, open the Terminal application in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder and run the following:
ls -ln /Users/
Both instances of l in the command are lowercase Ls. This command will produce one line for each folder you currently have in /Users/, and each line will contain a number such as 501 or 502; in addition to performing the following steps, post back with the results, as they may be useful if future suggestions are needed. Locate the first number in this pair, and then reopen the NetInfo Manager. Change the numeric UID of each account to match the number associated with that account's home folder as specified in the database. For example, if the folder /Users/casandrasilver/ is listed as having a UID of 501 in the Terminal output, change the UID of the account with the /Users/casandrasilver/ home folder to 501. Do not change the numeric UID of any account which has an existing UID below 500.
Is the user data everything in the folder (Applications, Desktop, Documents, Library, Movies, Music, Pictures, Public and Sites)?
If so, shall I replace the items in the folder with the house icon (those items being esktop, Documents, Library, Movies, Music, Pictures)? Just want to be sure.
Yes, the user data is everything in those folders. When moving the files to your current home folder, you should avoid overwriting anything which is in use; if these items prevent you from moving folders back, rename the existing folder, and perform the move operation.
I'm back to changing the short name of my account.
You said to open the NetInfo Manager. I'm there. I don't know how to locate my account in the list of accounts and change the home property to point to the desired location of my account.
I see three columns in the NetInfo "local@localhost-/" window. One has a "/" in it and nothing below, the other has a list "aliases, groups, machines, mounts, networks, printers, protocols, rpcs, services, users" in it and the other column has nothing.
Do I click on "users" and then what? Specifically how do I "point to the desired locationn of my account"?
Click on the users item, and then look in the column to the right for the item with your account's name; once you've found that item, click on it. One of the properties for this item will have a value starting with /Users/; change the second part of this property so that it is the desired name of your home folder. Go into the /Users/ folder in the Finder and rename the folder with the house icon to match the new setting. This change will take effect when you log out and log back in.
Great to see you have it solved!
There is a neat little free program the next time that you have to change the short name
it is called Changeshortname by James Bucanek & Dan Frakes
and it does it for you in a blink
check it out at
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16620 It is a very easy way to do it
rf
