[OSX] Deleting original admin-level account and recreation

[mstrkrft82]

Greetings.

I'm running Snow Leopard. I personally performed the original install on this machine a few months ago. During installation, I was prompted to create the first user account. So I put my name in, desired username ("joe") and password, and everything was glorious.

Fastforward to today. I want to master-reset all settings (everything) of my account and in essence start a new user account from scratch. The only catch is that I want to keep my existing username (joe).

Is it "safe" to:

1. Create a new temporary administrator account (for example, "temp"),
   
2. Log into said temporary administrator account ("temp"),
   
3. Delete my first/original/real user account ("joe") using accounts preference pane and selecting the "delete folder" option,
   
4. Create a new administrator account named "joe"
   
5. Log out of "temp", log into the new "joe", delete "temp"
   

What do I mean by 'safe'? Will I lose control of anything that may be tied to the 'first admin' account, or mess up permissions?

Is there another way to achieve a master-reset for application preferences that is clean?

ty

[mstrkrft82]

Update -

Here is the appropriate method to factory reset OSX so that the next boot-up launches Setup Assistant and allows the user to recreate the "first" user account.

1:

Boot mac into single user mode by holding down Command-S at startup.

2:

$ mount -uw /

$ rm -R /Library/Preferences/

$ rm -R /Users/USERNAME/

3:

$ /bin/launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist &

$ dscl . -delete /Users/USERNAME

$ dscl . -delete /Groups/admin GroupMembership USERNAME

4:

$ rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

5:

$ shutdown -h now

I'm very disappointed that no one was able to offer any help at all. I thought this was a real tech site. Oh well, thank you Macworld.

[Rudy]

I'm very disappointed that no one was able to offer any help at all. I thought this was a real tech site. Oh well, thank you Macworld.

While Neowin is a great place to get tech help, sometimes for Macs you're better to go to a more specialized forum (Macrumors, macworld etc etc)