Added a user account, now my iMac is acting up.

Added a user account simply for a second iTunes library and so no crossover with contacts, favorites, etc. would occur on the family's iPhones. The first problem I noticed is when waking the display from sleep, the screen saver being used will be frozen on the screen and you have to use the mouse to "uncover" the user accounts. Over the past week or so, my problems have gotten worse... The pinwheel will appear for 10+ minutes while doing something as simple as searching for a document, many of the files on my desktop disappeared (luckily i had them backed up), and the computer will freeze with no recovery, forcing me to do a hard shut down (eek!). All software/hardware is up to date, I have repaired my permissions several times, and I even deleted my windows partition. The computer is hardly ever under a great amount of stress.. The most it is doing at one time is having a web browser or two open, mail, iCal, and iTunes. Could this all be because of an empty user account? I have plenty of room to spare on the computer and I haven't done anything drastic to the computer lately... Any insight would be appreciated.

Tell us about the actual Mac. What model? What version of Mac OS X? Is all the software up-to-date? Does it have 3rd party RAM? Is your LAN wired or wireless? Etc, etc, etc.
Dah•veed

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How can I sync 2 iPhones to 1 user account on an iMac via iCloud?

My wife and I share one user account on our iMac. In the past when have had seperate user accounts but we usually would just use whichever one was logged on and then get frustrated when we had to switch over to retieve a certian file. Now that we both have iPhones setting up iCloud to differentiate between us a bit is causing a bit of confusion. I set up iCloud with my phone right out of the box no problem. However, is there a way to sync hers up without creating a separate user account on the iMac?

Ok in a round about way I got my wife's phone to to sync with the bookmarks at least once. I set up iCloud on my PC laptop and installed Safari. Then I logged it on to my iCloud account which imported all the bookmarks over. Then, still on the PC, I switched over the iCloud to my wife's account and presto her phone had all the bookmarks. Now this probably means her bookmarks are only synched with the PC (which is okay because she spends more time on it anyway. I'm always hoging the IMac) and the iMac and the PC are not synched together.
I'm still haveing a problem with my calander syncing with the iMac. My reminders show up but if I add an event to a particular day from my phone it does not. This even applies when I log onto iCloud.com. However, if I add an event on the iMac it does show up on my phone. All the settings are turned on on all three devices. I've tried turning them on and off. I just don't get it because it was working fine.
Contacts seem to be syncing for both of us.... sort of. Any contacts we add on our phone syncs to the Mac but it is doubling up on people we both have.

Sharing Itunes library between an admin and user account on one imac G5

Hello,
Please forgive the repetitive question. i have set up an admin and a user account on my iMac. I set the itunes library to users/shared/music/itunes/itunes library on both accounts. The music shows up on the admin account but not the user account.
Can anyone give a quick step by step including obscure settings that may need to be altered so that I can finally get this pesky stress monkey off my shoulder!
Thanks!
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3) Ipod video 30Gb

Hi,
Someone recently poasted a similar problem as yours.
Here's the discussion and solution:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1192454

My wife and I have separate have separate user accounts on our IMac. We have separate Apple IDs for iTunes. How can we use iCloud on our separate iPhones without sharing contacts, calendars, etc.

My wife and I have separate have separate user accounts on our IMac. We have separate Apple IDs for iTunes. How can we use iCloud on our separate iPhones without sharing contacts, calendars, etc.

If have separate iCloud accounts and want to keep your all your iCloud data separate, you can create separate user accounts for each of you, then sign into your individual iCloud account within your user account.
If you want to just add both iCloud calendars on your Mac, you can sign into one iCloud account in System Preferences>iCloud, then add the second account in System Preferences>Internet Accounts>iCloud and only check Calendars with this second account.

Basic File Sharing question between user accounts on my iMac

I don't understand how to be able to share and download to one common folder among User Accounts on my iMac. I am trying to use a Clean Account as a test, and wanted to copy a file I downloaded from the web in one account into this clean account folder, and install the file.
I went to Sharing and thought I turn File Sharing on. Logged into the Clean account and Apple+I the folder, changing access priviledges to the folder. Then copy the file into the Clean User Account.
But it doesn't work that way. Can anyone help me understand sharing between accounts?

File Sharing is for sharing files between two different machines, not between different accounts on the same machine. If you want to share files on one machine, you just need to put them in a folder everyone has access to, like the /Users/shared folder. Also, don't go fooling around with folder permissions... that's a good way to mess things up. If I had a nickel for every time someone messed up their system using the "Apply to enclosed items" option when changing permissions, I'd be a rich man!

My iTunes library is on an external hard drive; how do I set it so other users (accounts) on my imac, will also have the same library, with the same playlists

my iTunes library is on an external hard drive; how do I set it so other users (accounts) on my imac, will also have the same library, with the same playlists

Quit iTunes.
Sign into another user account.
Hold Option, launch iTunes.
Select Choose library... and select the iTunes folder on the external.
Do this for all users.
NOTE: You must quit iTunes when switching users as the library can only be opened by one user at a time.

How do i set up a mac book from a user account on an iMac?

i have just got a mac book pro and want to set it up to a user account on an imac? there are more than one user account and i dont want everything to be move across, what's the best way of doing it?

I am assuming you want to add an existing .mac account to your Mail app on your MacBook?
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1277

How can I use Microsoft Office on two user accounts on one IMAc?

Dear all,
I have installed Microsoft Office 2011 on my IMac which I have recently bought. I did this on the (at that time) only user account in place: the administrator account.
A little time after this my wife and I decided it would be much easier to us to make an additional user account on the same computer for my wife (also with administrator rights), so we could have our own settings, desktop preferences etc. So now we have two user accounts/profiles on one Imac, so far so good.
But when my wife signs in on her account, she is not able to use Microsoft Office . Office seems to be only available to the user account on which it has been installed initially: 'my' account.
Can anyone help us out here and tell us how we can make Office available to my wife's user account as well? I understand that the licence of Office is restricted to one computer, but what about two accounts on the same IMac? I mean, it is still one computer, one 'home', one family etc.
We would appreciate your help here!
Kind regards,
Jurjen

As long as you installed MS Office into its default location (the top level /Applications folder) it will be available to all user accounts on the Mac.
As far as licensing is concerned you only have to enter the license code once, which you should do right after installing MS Office, in the same admin account you installed it from, by opening any one of the MS Office applications. There is no additional licensing required for additional user accounts on the same Mac.
Each user account is able to run the Office apps. The only thing you will have to do is go through an initial setup screen in each user account (but this setup does NOT involve entering any additional license codes).
You may have problems if you installed MS Office in a particular user account (i.e. NOT in the top level /Applications folder).

Problem with 2 user accounts on one iMac

There are two user accounts on our home iMac. Both are set as administrators. When my partner accesses the backup drive (Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex), he can open all of the backup files.
When I try to access the backup files, there is no access listed for me. When I click Get Info on any of the locked folders, I am not even listed as a user (only the other admin and "everyone else" are listed).
As an admin, I can manually add myself as an administrator and eventually open all the backup files. I've given myself admin access to the Seagate drive, but I still have to give myself admin access on the individual backup files.
1. Why is this happening?
2. Is there a faster way to grant me access to the backup files?
Here's the backstory:
I had upgraded to Lion in August but since then, performance dropped radically. I backed up the iMac and then clean installed Snow Leopard. My mac is totally back to normal. Since then, I have administrator access to only the files backed up with OS 10.6.8 but everything backed up under 10.7 is locked. But they're NOT locked for the other administrator account. Like I said, I can go and grant myself access to the files, but I don't understand why I have to go through that.
Ideas?
Thanks in advance for help and answers.

Do a get info on the backup drive. Open up the Sharing & Permissions section if necessary. Unlock the drive permissions by clicking on the lock icon. Input admin password etc. If you are not already listed as having read/write access to the drive, do that now (add your account name if necessary with the plus button). Now click on the gear icon and select "Apply to enclosed items..." Relock the drive permissions by clicking on the lock icon. You should be good to go now.

Adding New User Account

My parents use an iMac w/Intel Core 2 Duo running Leopard (10.5.4). When they set up the machine initially they set up a single account (we'll call it UserA) - which is the administrator account and the account that both of them use. I know this is a bad practice but this is where I am working from. It had not been a problem for them up until now as my mother's primary use for the computer had been Safari and using RDC to connect to her Windows box at work.
However, my mother is looking to have her own account set up so that she can have her documents, mail, ect. set up separately. The problem comes in with the apps that they share (i.e. iPhoto, iTunes). I would like both user accounts to see iTunes and iPhoto the same way. The have built up their music and photo collection collectively and would both like to be able to access the same libraries. I have gone as far as creating a new user (UserB) for my mother (as a standard account). I copied her documents from the administrator account (UserA) into her documents folder. What is the best approach to sharing iTunes and iPhoto libraries across the two user accounts? Thank you.

there are several ways to do that.
1. the easiest is to enable sharing in both itunes and iphoto. This will allow user A to see libraries of user B and vise versa. However, they won't be able to add stuff to each other libraries. also, this will only work when both of them are logged in at the same time. so you'll have to enable fast user switching in accounts preferences and keep both users logged in.
2. second easiest. if you have an external drive (or a partition of an internal drive) you can move itunes and iphoto libraries there and turn off ownership on that partition. select the partition, eneter command+i and in the info popup check the box "ignore ownership on this drive" at the bottom.
after you've moved itunes and iphoto libraries you need to point the apps to the new locations. hold option and start iphoto. You'll get a dialog asking you to choose the library. do the same for itunes.
3. you can use the method from [ Király 's post in this thread|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2719139&#2719139].
Skip step 3) that he describes - it's not needed in Leopard.

Mac osx 10.6 froze at login to another user account now boots to blue

I am at my wits end and i'm hoping someone can help!!!
this is about the 5th time my mac has just frozen, eventually causing me to reformat, reload and start again, and that's in the past 3 months, i only bought the thing in january and this has been a regular occurance...
and of course it isnt the same problem each time... altho i am getting to know the keystrokes for booting up in the most obscure ways which some may consider a positive, i am finding the time i need to spend on this tedious and just plain frustrating....
so i have a macbookpro, it did have the latest version of snow leopard 10.6 on it, and i had obtained the new lion operating system but of course i havent had the opportunity to download and install because this has occurred twice since Lion came out...
i have spent a lot of time trying to get this to work...
this time i had three accounts one of which was administrative the other two held a variety of personal or professional documents on them, basically the admin one only had file downloads and computer 'stuff' in it,
all three were secured by fire vault and this seemed to be working this time, - although i did note that the time before this disaster i was unable to vault any of my accounts and when i tried to set up new accounts and secured them during the set up process i wasnt able to access them after they had been set up... (thats just an aside which may or may not be relevant, but thought i'd mention it anyway)...
the three accounts were pretty well organised and appeared to be functioning until last night when i was 'doing the right thing' and checking and repairing disk permissions in disk utility (apparently the system was expecting 0 but was getting 80 or vic versa) in the user account that had administrative rights, when i logged out of that account and attempted to log into another non admin account the screen went blue and it just sat there like that for an hour or so. in the end i turned it off and since then i have not been able to log in or boot past the blue screen....
the other thing that happened unbenownst to me was that although i did have the backup system set up in time machine to an external drive, when i tried to restore the only file i could find was this....... '.com.apple.timemachine.donotpresent' which has zero kb ... so of course i cant use the backup to restore the system and quite frankly i doubt that the mac would recognise it anyway, its not recognising anything that makes any difference to it at all...
i have tried everything but nothing works...
it wont boot from the CD which came with it - actually it never has successfully booted from the CD, but now it wont even acknoweldge that the CD is there...
other things i have tried include all the 'key strokes'
such as shift - for safe mode - nothing happens,
option to access start up manager but that stops at a lock icon which of course doenst open with any of my passwords, persumably because it's not booting to one of my accounts - but i really dont know...
i have tried single user and verbose, resetting the nvram, doing a 'dirty boot', trying to test the hardware, and a variety of other keystrokes which have been set out in various online forums but nothing happens.....
and NOTHING WORKS....
what does happen is that when i press the power button it comes on quickly there is no start up sound, the apple appears and then shortly after the circle thing appears and then it just goes to blue and after a few moments it goes black (like in sleep mode) and will stay there for hours if left until a key is pressed at which point it the blue appears again and so the cycle continues....
is there anyone out there who might be able to help i really dont know what to do next

If the system is getting to the blue screen it can be a startup item or application enhancer stopping the login process, also you mentioned a lock when you held option? this is most likely a firmware password set on the machine, to remove a firmware password you need to remove a stick of ram and do a PRAM reset, (hold command-option-p-r on boot). after this you should be able to hold option and boot from the install disc, or try other troubleshooting methods.

My user account on my iMac G5 isn't working correctly?

Hello all,
I recently downloaded a program called "Secrets" on my iMac G5. This program tweaks some simple settings such as changing the dock from the glassy 3D to the 2D black dock. After tweaking a few things to what I thought would help my computer faster, I restarted it. Everything was working well, but when I logged in I noticed some issues. The top right part of the transparent bar wasn't loading. The bar itself was, but the time, ethernet icon, and bluetooth icon were not. I ignored this, as usualy it took a decent amount of time for it to load. However, then I tried launching Safari. The icon bounced as usual, but nothing happened at all. I tried loading system preferences, it clicked, but nothing happened at all. The same goes with everything else. Even attempting to click on shut down wouldn't work, it would just click and nothing would happen. I attempted to boot into safe mode, same results. I fimally found something that seemed to work, I logged into the guest account and from there, everything was working perfectly, which brought me down to thinking this is a user account related problem, probably because I installed that program "Secrets" on my main account only. Is there anything I could possibly try to get my main account working again? If not, is there some way I could transfer my programs from my old account to a new created one? (I tried, but I was told I didn't have sufficent permission to access my main account's "Applications" folder.)
Thanks again for reading my problem, and I hope I could get some help.
~Nick

Hi Nick,
One way to test is to Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, Test for problem in Safe Mode...
PS. Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive
Reboot, test again.
If it only does it in Regular Boot, then it could be some hardware problem like Video card, (Quartz is turned off in Safe Mode), or Airport, or some USB or Firewire device, or 3rd party add-on, Check System Preferences>Accounts>Login Items window to see if it or something relevant is listed.
Check the System Preferences>Other Row, for 3rd party Pref Panes.
Also look in these if they exist, some are invisible...
/private/var/run/StartupItems
/Library/StartupItems
/System/Library/StartupItems
/System/Library/LaunchDaemons
/Library/LaunchDaemons

Can I share color profiles and distiller settings with all user accounts on my imac?

Everyone in our studio is on OSX 10.8.3 with adobe cs6 (not creativecliud version).
I have installed color settings and distiller settings on to the macs under the employees user profile.
All the machines also have a general user profile which anyone can use (setup mainly for use by freelancers).
Is there a space on the macs where i can install the color profiles and distiller settings so that all user accounts have them set up?
At the moment i am having to go into each user account on each machine and do it manually.
Also once i have installed distiller settings in one user account I can't install them on subsequent users.
I have tried placing the files in the
library/applicationsupport/adobe/color/
library/applicationsupport/adobe/adobepdf/settings
and
user/library/applicationsupport/adobe/color/
user/library/applicationsupport/adobe/adobepdf/settings
any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks,Russell

In that case, assuming your wife's XP User Account can access the D: drive as well, you don't have to bother with the To share your music with other accounts on the computer section of that article. That's already taken care of.
Just log into her account and head directly to the To listen to another account's music files section and follow those instructions.
If I had to emphasize one step to keep from stuffing it up, it would be:
4. Deselect the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library file" option.
("Deselect" being a fancy way of saying "uncheck")

TS3276 There are two User accounts on my iMac. The two Users have seperate email accounts. Both email Mailboxes show up in each Account. If I Delete Mailbox from in User account, does it delete the Mailbox from the other User account at the same time?

There are 2 Users on my iMac. Each User has their own email account. Both account Mailboxes show up in each User's account. If I delete a Mailbox in one account, does it delete the same Mailbox in the other Account?

If you click the - sign in Mail preferences, it will delete that mail account. If you just delete the Mailbox, that will just delete the Mailbox.
Each user can put their own email account information in Mail when logged into their User Account.
If you don't want the other user's mail account to show up in your mail application, then make sure the other user's messages are available to them when they are logged into their account and delete the other user account from Mail in your User Account. The other user can do the same when logged into their user account. Any messages stored in one locally will have to be transfered to the other's user account if it's not saved in their user login.
In addition, instead of deleting the account at first, highlight the account and open the Advanced Tab and disable the account. That email account will dissappear from Mail. Once you decide that you don't want the account, you can delete it. If you need to get back to it to transfer messages, just re enable it.

How to use iPhoto with 1 photo library and 2 user accounts on 1 iMac ?

Title says it all.
I don't want to have a double picture library, it takes enough space from my harddisk already.
My wife and I share the same camera too. We want to see the same pictures when using iPhoto.
Possible solution: Do I have to make a softlink from 1 user account to the photo lib that belongs to the other account ? [in Terminal: ln /Users/.... etc.)
(Yes, I'm an ex-Linux user)
Thnx
Fred4711

If you want to have the same data, do you need separate accounts? A surprising number of people think that must have separate ccounts and they really don't need to.
Anyway:
For iPhoto 09 (version 8.0.2) and later:
What you mean by 'share'.
If you want the other user to be able to see the pics, but not add to, change or alter your library, then enable Sharing in your iPhoto (Preferences -> Sharing), leave iPhoto running and use Fast User Switching to open the other account. In that account, enable 'Look For Shared Libraries'. Your Library will appear in the other source pane.
Any user can drag a pic from the Shared Library to their own in the iPhoto Window.
Remember iPhoto must be running in both accounts for this to work.
If you want the other user to have the same access to the library as you: to be able to add, edit, organise, keyword etc.
Quit iPhoto in both accounts. Move the Library to the Users / Shared Folder
(You can also use an external HD set to ignore permissions, a Disk Image or even partition your Hard Disk.)
In each account in turn: Double click on the Library to open it. (You may be asked to repair the Library Permissions.) From that point on, this will be the default library location. Both accounts will have full access to the library, in fact, both accounts will 'own' it.
However, there is a catch with this system and it is a significant one. iPhoto is not a multi-user app., it does not have the code to negotiate two users simultaneously writing to the database, and trying will cause db corruption. So only one user at a time, and back up, back up back up.

Added a user account, now my iMac is acting up.

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