Bizarre Behavior on MacBook/OSX. Any Thoughts?

[drmike]

My brother (who bought a MacBook this weekend, about two weeks after I bought myself a MacBook) called me last night with a bizarre problem (or, at least, it seemed bizarre to us). Two folders on his desktop (each contained a small application) had completely disappeared, and even a search in Spotlight couldn't locate them. In addition, his address info in Address Book was gone (he only had one entry in Address Book), and his Dashboard only displayed the default widgets, not the ones he had previously put there.

I was stumped. I have no idea why this happened. Now, one thing to add (I'm not sure if it's related) is that he had changed the name of his home folder by right-clicking on it. I told him earlier in the day that I didn't think you could change the name of the home folder, and when he restarted his MacBook, he found that the home folder reverted to its original name (as I expected it would) ... but then he could no longer right-click on it at all.

Are all of these things related? Any thoughts? We're both fairly new to OS X, so any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[OscarTheGrouch]

My brother (who bought a MacBook this weekend, about two weeks after I bought myself a MacBook) called me last night with a bizarre problem (or, at least, it seemed bizarre to us). Two folders on his desktop (each contained a small application) had completely disappeared, and even a search in Spotlight couldn't locate them. In addition, his address info in Address Book was gone (he only had one entry in Address Book), and his Dashboard only displayed the default widgets, not the ones he had previously put there.

I was stumped. I have no idea why this happened. Now, one thing to add (I'm not sure if it's related) is that he had changed the name of his home folder by right-clicking on it. I told him earlier in the day that I didn't think you could change the name of the home folder, and when he restarted his MacBook, he found that the home folder reverted to its original name (as I expected it would) ... but then he could no longer right-click on it at all.

Are all of these things related? Any thoughts? We're both fairly new to OS X, so any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Could he have accidently started a new user account or anything like that?? I'm not sure I am just now getting back into MAC's after being out of the game for a few OS's

 

[drmike]

I was thinking the same thing, but he told me that when he checked his user accounts, he could only see one account listed (unless, for some reason, he'd normally be unable to see any other user account -- I'm too new to OS X to know exactly how user accounts work and who can see them).

 

[annk]

If he did change the name of his home folder, I think that's the culprit. There are lots of threads about this already, here's one that offers a solution.

 

[swiftaw]

Did he rename the little House icon on the left side of the finder window?

 

[drmike]

Yeah, he renamed the house icon on the left side of the Finder window. I can see from the thread annk linked to (thanks, annk!) that this is a fairly common problem, and it is indeed too bad that OS X offers no warning of what will happen. If this is what's causing the disappearing folders and Address Book info and the changes to Dashboard, I'll have him follow the instructions that Apple provided in one of the articles mentioned in that other thread. Hopefully that'll do the trick.

 

[4nr-]

kewl thread, good advice. Never knew about this.