The name you entered cannot be used

[dpk]

This is my first time using a Mac since OS 6 days. So far, not so good.

I just received a MacBook Pro, straight from Shanghai. I'm at the "Create Your Account" screen and it had my name ("David Kirchner", without quotes) and a short name ("davidkirchner", which incidentally is only one character shorter) in the fields. I changed the short name to "dpk". I clicked "Continue" and I get a dialog box stating:

"The name you entered cannot be used.
This name is not available. Please enter a different name."

Red arrows appear next to both the name and the short name, suggesting both are invalid. As far as I know, there's nothing invalid about my name. It's served me well for decades.

According to Google, I am the first person to ever see this error message. I'm both honored and humbled.

Any ideas?

 

[TEG]

Interesting. I use TEG as my short name (in CAPS) and my First Name, Middle Initial, Last Name. I had a problem when I used Panther, but I restarted the comptuer and it worked.

TEG

 

[Wiredrawn]

Hmm, seems quite an odd one.

Since I don't really have much expertise in this area, I suggest ringing the friendly bunch at Apple.

Have you got a Careplan? If you have, even better, you get to ring the even friendlier bunch at the CarePlan call centre.

 

[dpk]

I'm at work, and gave up on it for a while. I closed the screen. When I had time I re-opened it, and it was at the same screen (sans dialog box), with the same red arrows. I did not touch anything but the lid (not the keyboard or trackpad, that is).

But a few seconds later, it moved on to the "Complete Your Mac Experience" screen. So, I guess, success?

One thing I forgot to mention: It had "Setting your computer's clock" at the bottom of the screen. Maybe that was failing, so OS X saw a failure of some type, and then generated the wrong error message.

At "Complete Your Mac Experience", it wouldn't let me choose "continue" or "go back". I tried my famous "close and open the notebook, wait 3 seconds" fix, but no joy.

 

[Wiredrawn]

Sorry, i'm stumped here, I would Call Apple.

 

[dpk]

Turning the notebook off and back on, while Apple was on the phone, fixed it. My Apple fix toolkit now consists of "jiggle the handle". Cool.