[X4U] Changing short and long names

[Daly Jessup]

At 5:27 AM -0800 20/2/07, Crandon David wrote:
>Can someone please refresh my memory about how to change both the 
>short and long names of my computer? I'm giving my old G4 to someone 
>else, but don't want to completely reformat the hard drive.

I believe you can change the long name without bad consequence, in 
the Accounts system pref pane. To change the short user name is 
another thing altogether. There is a utility for doing it, but I 
don't think it works in Tiger.

However, if you follow the process I describe below, you don't have 
to change either user name. Just create a new Admin user alongside 
your existing user, and give it whatever names you wish.

I just had to do that myself, and what I did was to  make sure that 
in the existing account, all applications were positioned in the main 
Hard  Drive/Applications folder (not in random places in the user's 
own folder). I opened a second Finder window and went to Hard 
Drive/Users/Shared/

I moved the music from the old user folder to the  Shared folder. I 
moved pictures from the old user pictures folder to Shared.

Then I created a new user with the name I preferred, moved the 
pictures and music from the Shared folder to the new user picturs and 
music folders, made sure everything worked, then deleted the original 
account.

If you don't want to pass on your music and pictures to the new user, 
then you can skip all that. Just be sure all applications are in the 
Applications folder, create a new user (be sure to make it an Admin 
user), then delete the original account after confirming everything 
is working. Don't delete the original user until you have done the 
confirmation, because you can always go back to the original user and 
pick up little bits from, say, the Library folder, if you need them.

Daly
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