Changing the owner

[colin.gray7]

Twelve months ago I sold my reliable old G5 and bought a used ,nearly new. 21.5 inch 2.5GHz Intel Core iS.
Its currently running on Lion 10.7.5. There are many times when I think I made an expensive mistake.
However my qestion is can anyoine tell me how to get rid of the name of the original owner. It does not effect the computer but I find it irritating the the home file :the one with the picture of the house, has her name on it.
Try as I may I have not been able to remove it so any suggestions will be welcomed.

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

Personally I would reinstall OS X.

 

[colin.gray7]

Thanks. But that raises the problem that the iMac came with OSx pre installed so I have no discs. Those that came with my G5 went with the machine as did much software which I realised I could no longer use. I rather suspect that I let myself be bullied into uprating by search engines telling me I needed to update my system and then telling me I could not do it with the existing machine.
I actually find Lion irritating to use and would not consider moving on a more exotic system.

 

[colin.gray7]

Have just found out I can reinstall on line. Now have to see how not to lose apps and photos and other junk I have accumulated which may be useful to retain.

 

[Kaveman]

Just make a new User Account with the details you want and delete the other User Account.

 

[colin.gray7]

I have tried changing the user account. Problem is that the "owner" account cannot be deleted no matter how great an administrator you are. The problem is what happens to the rest of the software and data files when I take the great adventure of reinstalling OSX

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

The problem is what happens to the rest of the software and data files when I take the great adventure of reinstalling OSX

The first thing to do is a backup IE Time Machine, this way once you have installed OS X you can replace data and files from TM.

Thanks. But that raises the problem that the iMac came with OSx pre installed so I have no discs.

When you turn on your computer, press and hold the command-R buttons until the Apple icon appears. The Mac OS X Utilities box should appear.
If your operating system is corrupted, you will not be connected to the internet. Look in the upper right hand corner and you will see the wifi signal icon. Click on it and you will be able to reestablish your internet connection. You must be connected to the internet if you have not created a backup of your operating system.
Select the 2nd option on the Utilities menu – Reinstall Mac OS X. It will download and reinstall Lion, much as when Lion was installed from the Mac App Store or in your case as it came out of the box.

 

[Kaveman]

I'm not sure what you mean by "owner" account OSX doesn't have an owner account there are Admin and Standard and Guest accounts, all accounts can be deleted. Yes if you follow oldscribes instructions you will loose everything.

To delete an account you click the minus button enter the user name and password of any admin and then a sheet appears giving you save option and then its gone.

Obviously you have to have made an new admin account and be logged into that account.

 

[colin.gray7]

This is my second attempt at this as I was logged off mid stream
The problem I have is that the Finder window is headed by previous owners name, If I select a file and go to finder, get info under users id the name of the previous owner and at the bottom of the window the previous owners name appears as having Read and Write privileges but no mention of me. However if I go Systems preferences users and groups I am the only mane mentioned and have the admin privileges. Can someone advise how to change the name. I will not go through another 36 hours of the computer attempting to reinstall, to no avail.

 

[Kaveman]

And how did you change the User Account name?

 

[colin.gray7]

Cant really remember but suppose I went to Users/groups in Systems Preferences and put myself in as administrator. Presumanbly the previous owner had deleted herself.

 

[colin.gray7]

Cant really remember but suppose I went to Users/groups in Systems Preferences and put myself in as administrator. Presumanbly the previous owner had deleted herself.

 

[Kaveman]

Cant really remember but suppose

seems like you've messed your system up, I gave you instructions on what to do, if you can remember I suppose I can't help.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Does any of this help get rid of the default account info?

http://www.macswest.org/resources/rayscorner/change_macs_name.pdf

 

[oldscribe]

One thing puzzles if this was a clean install, there should be no trace of previous owner anywhere.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

One thing puzzles if this was a clean install, there should be no trace of previous owner anywhere.

In my response I was just going off this from the OP, but I could've missed something:

Thanks. But that raises the problem that the iMac came with OSx pre installed so I have no discs.

 

[colin.gray7]

Thank you spawn Dooley Unfortunately it did not work System preferences accounts is now "Users and groups" Went through process of setting up a new account despite mine being the only account listed. Then I got a window which said "Automatic login is turned on. Do you want to turn it off.
If automatic login remains on you must ;go out to allow this user to lo in on their own account. The computer will automatically log in as "the original owners name" after a restart or shutdown. If I shut down automatic log in will this help remove the original owner.

 

[colin.gray7]

Cheers old scribe. I will describe what happened. . I opened time machine and was asked to set up a location. When I attempted to do this I was then asked to set up another time capsule. I don't know what a time capsule is and the help program doesn't.
So I then transferred apps I might want to keep which I dint think come with OSX and photos to DVD discs thus providing some backup.
I then went to restart, held my breath and pressed cmd-R. . I then chose the reinstall option from the menu. The machine told me it a was installing Lion and other things and it would take 37hours and some minutes to do so. Shortly afterwards it reduced the time estimate to 27 hours and did start to tick off the minutes quite quickly. I left the computer for about an hour during which time it was steadily working. However next time I looked it said it was not connected to the internet. I pressed "Try again" and it appeared to resume from whence it had left off. Later I got he same message and when I pressed try again we went back to 37 hours I the left it for about 15 hours and in the morning it appeared to have restarted. Nothing had been lost and, oh dear, the previous owners name was still heading finder and nothing appeared to have changed.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

... from whence it had left off.

Just as an aside, nice grammar!

the previous owners name was still heading finder

Could you please upload a screenshot of this?

 

[oldscribe]

Hi,

I don't know what a time capsule is and the help program doesn't.

Its for backup storage etc, have a look here.
http://www.apple.com/airport-time-capsule/

I opened time machine

Ahh I understand now, so not a clean install.
Personally if I bought a Mac from say eBay or from a relative /friend with preloaded Lion, I would have made a bootable USB stick and used that to format / erase my drive completely,and do a clean install, then conected TM and reinstalled the applications I wanted + docs > photos etc.


If you do go down this route you may need the lion recovery assistant here in order to create the bootable USB.
https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/39771/lion-recovery-disk-assistant

And remember that if the Mac is on then it will not see this USB drive.
Once created you have to turn the Mac off insert the USB stick then reboot, upon which you are given the option of which drive to use of course your newly created bootable stick will be listed..