Hey Macrumors, I'm an occasional lurker and a two-year Mac user who has finally screwed up and needs your help.
Put simply, I changed the name of my home (or whatever the name by the little house in the leftmost edge of the finder window in Tiger is called) without knowing it would have negative consequences and the next thing I know I lose all my music, movies, files, etc, as well as having all those folders get replaced by generic folder icons. I freaked out, of course, because I have extremely important files that I simply cannot lose, so I immediately went to the Internet for help and found out that I shouldn't have changed that name like that.
Here's where I ask for your help: how can I restore things to how they were before this stupid mistake? I managed to find all (I think) my files when I rightclicked on the little house and clicked on "Open Enclosing Folder" and inside a found a normal folder with the new (mistake) name I put, but I have no idea how to turn all my settings back to normal. It's not just a matter of copying my documents and music back, really, because I have years worth of iPhoto albums and iTunes playlists which I don't want to spend hours building back, as well as many Address Book entries and my iCal schedules (and, sadly, also important stuff in Stickies in the Dashboard, but somehow I don't thing I'll be getting that back), which I don't know how to bring back (and I really need them).
I feel like a complete idiot (and deservedly so) and I am scared that I may have lost some very important stuff, so I ask you guys to please help someone semi computer-literate like me to fix this mistake. Thank you very much in advance for all your responses, and please pardon the rush of this post (I'm obviously still freaking out, as well as in a hurry).
Put simply, I changed the name of my home (or whatever the name by the little house in the leftmost edge of the finder window in Tiger is called) without knowing it would have negative consequences and the next thing I know I lose all my music, movies, files, etc, as well as having all those folders get replaced by generic folder icons. I freaked out, of course, because I have extremely important files that I simply cannot lose, so I immediately went to the Internet for help and found out that I shouldn't have changed that name like that.
Here's where I ask for your help: how can I restore things to how they were before this stupid mistake? I managed to find all (I think) my files when I rightclicked on the little house and clicked on "Open Enclosing Folder" and inside a found a normal folder with the new (mistake) name I put, but I have no idea how to turn all my settings back to normal. It's not just a matter of copying my documents and music back, really, because I have years worth of iPhoto albums and iTunes playlists which I don't want to spend hours building back, as well as many Address Book entries and my iCal schedules (and, sadly, also important stuff in Stickies in the Dashboard, but somehow I don't thing I'll be getting that back), which I don't know how to bring back (and I really need them).
I feel like a complete idiot (and deservedly so) and I am scared that I may have lost some very important stuff, so I ask you guys to please help someone semi computer-literate like me to fix this mistake. Thank you very much in advance for all your responses, and please pardon the rush of this post (I'm obviously still freaking out, as well as in a hurry).
