reinstall OSX and account permissions?

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Hi All,

Please help if you can. I am home for a few days, and my mother it turns out went and bought a used imac to (G5) to replace her aging G3. For some reason, she did all this without consulting really anyone, which is good for her.

However, she didn't do a complete reinstall of the OS, she just deleted all of the previous owners files, but his name is still the shortname, his password is the admin password (the only account - but we do have his password), and he is the owner of all of new files my mom has created in the past few months.

Her mac is starting to act odd, randomly closing programs too often for comfort (i.e. more than once). I think a complete reinstall would be a great idea. we have all the original install disks and registration numbers of all of the software.

How do we deal best with the old ownership of all of her files? I have both my powerbook and ipod with me for temporary storages.

is there any easy way to do this, we want to get this marvin guy off the computer altogether.

Cheers, any help would be MUCH appreciated.

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what I thought I might do:

make a new user account for my mom. transfer all her files from admin to the new account. **try to change ownership of files**?? This is where I am unsure. Can I batch do this?

copy this account to my ipod (it will fit).

reinstall, move user account back.

Will this work?

cheers

 

[beatsme]

what I thought I might do:

make a new user account for my mom. transfer all her files from admin to the new account. **try to change ownership of files**?? This is where I am unsure. Can I batch do this?

copy this account to my ipod (it will fit).

reinstall, move user account back.

Will this work?

cheers

I believe if you create another Administrator account for her on the G5, it should let her take ownership of whatever files she wants. After that, it'd probaby be a good idea to transfer her files to the G3, and then do a reformat/reinstall (with the zero all data option) on the G5.