In the few months I’ve had my Mac, I’ve had no need for anyone but myself to log onto the system. I took the computer with me while visiting a friend recently, though, and thought it would be prudent to have a guest account added to the computer. Whenever I try to add a user with the “accounts” section of the system settings program, though, it will create a folder under the “users” directory on the hard drive but the new user will not show up on the list of users, nor will that user have the option of logging in upon system startup.
What do I need to do to have a new user be recognized by the OS as an actual user?
Select Accounts from System Preferences. Then click on Login Options. (Enter passsword. You may also have to click on the little padlock icon to make changes.) You probably have Automatically log in as . . . checked. Uncheck that and you should be fine.
Even with “automatically log in as…”, you should still be able to log off your regular account and get the login screen. Did you try to name the new account “guest”? That might be the problem… That name might be reserved.
I have automatic login unchecked, and have it set to display a list of users. I’ve tried it with several different usernames that aren’t “Guest”. It doesn’t show up in any list anywhere, including the list of users in the Accounts dialog box.
Hmmm… when I got home, I discovered that there was now an update for Tiger to 10.0.2 or something, so I installed that, and now it’s working correctly. I really need to stop answering my own questions on here…