I can no longer log onto my computer

[karambos]

I bought my computer from someone and I keep seeing his name in various places like SYSTEM PREFERENCES > USERS and I'd like to substitute his name with mine. I asked someone over at apple forums about this and they told me to open the NetInfo Manager in APPLICATIONS > UTILITIES and to delete him from the users.

I did this and after about 5 minutes, the computer shut down and restarted and now I can't log on any more.

Luckily, yesterday I created an account with user rights only for my collegue. I used that to log on and from within this account a can still see the previous users' name in SYSTEM PREFERENCES > USERS. The previous users' account has my desktop! i.e. all the stuff I've been putting on the desktop over the last few weeks can be found on his desktop. I cannot access the user accounts, though.

If I go to APPLICATIONS > UTILITIES > NET INFO MANAGER > USERS I can see the following:
daemon
michi (the account I created yesterday)
mysql
nobody
root
smmsp
sshd
unknown
www

Please help me log on as an admin as I need my computer for my business.

[Wes]

Trying changing the name back and backing up the data. Next read this and give it a go:

http://www.macosxpowertools.com/

[mklos]

As you've just found out, its not a very good idea at all to screw around in NetInfo Manager as it can really screw your system up if you mess something up.

All you had to do was under the "Accounts" System Preference was delete his account and everything gets deleted when you do that. Then just create your own account in place of that.


What I would do since you bought it from someone else is I'd totally wipe the hard drive clean and start over with a fresh install of Mac OS X.3 with all the updates. This eliminates all the "unknowns" from the system and starts fresh. Its not hard and really doesn't take long at all to do. It takes longer to put the applications and stuff like that back on that it does to install Mac OS X.3 (Panther). If you do decide to do this, back everything up thats important and non replaceable, and then make sure you do an Erase and Install, NOT an Archive and Install. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, do an archive and install! It just screws everything up in the long run and you'll end up doing an erase and install anyways.