Brand new user account, same old name

I've been having some quirky behavior with the main account on my Powerbook. Most recently I purchased and installed Speed Download, only to find that it unexpectedly quits after just a few minutes of an FTP download. I can run it in a new account without incident. Reinstalling does not solve this problem.
But this is just the most recent issue, there is a lot of other strange behavior that I'd like to try solving with a new user account before I go ahead with a re-install of the OS. But I don't want trouble with permissions, etc. so my plan is this:
1) Backup old user account (let's call it ABC).
2) Create new admin account called XYZ.
3) Log into XYZ and delete ABC account
4) Rename XYZ back to ABC
5) Rebuild ABC from the backup, being careful to only import Library items I really need (like the Mail.app data) and let the rest be created from scratch.
The idea is that the user name will be the same, so there will be no permission issues. The contents of the Users/ABC/Library directory will be mostly new and uncluttered except for those items that I hand-pick from the backup.
Please only comment on this migration plan, I don't need help with Speed Download. This particular issue is only the straw that broke the camel's back, there is a lot of other quirky behavior that I am eager to get sorted out as well.
Any insight will be greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Ian
Powerbook G4   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

Ian,
I'm not sure if this will work.
The Mac OS (like all unix OS) is saving a user ID which is a number stored in the system, changing the name of the user will not help because your ID will be different than the old ID.
One thing I can think about is if you have another Mac you can use the migration assistant to move your data to it and back after deleting the old account.
One other option will be to delete your account without deletion of the files (files are stored under deleted users directory), create a new one and copy all needed data to the new account.
I hope this helps you,
Ziv

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