Old user accounts missing after repair

I just had the "random shutdown disorder" fixed on my MacBook at my local Apple Store. When the MacBook came back, and I powered it up, I had to go through the whole "new computer start up" stuff again. When I was done, I was surprised to see a desktop that was NOT the desktop that I expected. The desktop was empty, and the dock was not my old dock.
The Applications folder quickly confirmed that all of my old software was there. And then a look at the MacBook/users folder showed that all of my old accounts were still there (along with the stuff that I had had on my desktop, documents, etc.).
How do I get my OLD main user account back to being the default? I will assume that once that has happened, the other accounts will also be available (since none of them appear now in the account list).
Thanks.
Gary
MacBook   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   2GHz Intel; 1.25 GB 667 MHz DDR2
MacBook   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

I cannot list any accounts -- none appear other than the new one I created. They only exist in the "Users" folder.
The Users folder contains the account home folders, not the accounts themselves; to create the accounts, open the Accounts pane of System Preferences and create new ones in the same order they were originally created.
That said, I've never figured out HOW the computer decides what to call the "admin" account -- it has been called "admin" on one of my computers, "Home" on another (actually, the computer in question before this repair), and now "grbrower".
If an account is a member of the admin group, it will have administrator access to the machine regardless of what its shortname is; you can view the membership of this group in the NetInfo Manager, which is in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder. It is possible for no administrator accounts to be present on the machine; this can happen if you change the shortname of the only administrator account on the machine through the NetInfo Manager without updating the admin group's membership.
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    Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit

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