Creating a Standard User with all of Root's files, apps, prefs....?

Newb here..

Would you be able to do the following, and pardon me if I'm completely wrong as I've only had a mac now for 5 days

1. Create your personal account
2. Log back in as root and copy/move the files you want into the folder of the personal account.
3. If files left over that have already copied to the personal account, just delete them.

Would that work? It would seem so from a previous Windows user, but don't know how permissions / ownerships work in Mac world yet.

 

Are you SURE you're running as root, not just as an admin user? Root is not enabled by default on standard installations of OS X (with darned good reason), and you have to go through a process of enabling the account before you can use it - it will never be the only account on the system. If you are running as root, then you'll be typing in "root' as your user name each time you log in to the computer.

If, as I suspect, you're just running as an admin user, then you don't need to move your account. Just make a new account with admin privileges, log out of your existing account, log in to the new one and go to system prefs/accounts. You can then disable admin privileges for your original account. Log back into it and you're good to go.