xfdesktop and xfce4-panel won't start unless sudo

[Champlin93]

On start-up the desktop and panel flash for a moment and then disappear. If I try to run it in a terminal I get this
xfce4-panel:

Segmentation fault (core dumped)
josh@josh-Satellite-C655:~$ 
(wrapper:5702): Gdk-WARNING **: GdkWindow 0x2e00004 unexpectedly destroyed
The program 'wrapper' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadWindow (invalid Window parameter)'.
  (Details: serial 222 error_code 3 request_code 18 minor_code 0)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

xfdesktop:

xfdesktop[5762]: starting up
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

If I run the --sync option as it says nothing changes and will still display the exact same thing in the terminal. If I run either of these programs under sudo then they work fine so I think this might be an issue of ownership. I just need to know what file i need to take ownership of.
I'm running Ubuntu 12.04

[ajgreeny]

Have you added xfce to a full Ubuntu unity installation, or is this a Xubuntu system?

What happens if you make a new user, temporarily if you want, and then login to xfce with that user? If the new user works OK it points to your /home folder or partition having problems in some configuration or other.

[Champlin93]

I have a full Ubuntu unity installation.
I just tried creating a new user and it worked perfectly, however I really don't want to start over with a new account is there a way to make mine work?

[Toz]

Perhaps something is corrput in your sessions cache. Log out and go to the first tty (Ctrl+Alt+F1), log in and delete the sessioins cache:

rm -rf $HOME/.cache/sessions

...(NOTE: be careful typing in that command - it will recursively delete and you want to make sure you are only deleting the .cache/sessions folder in your home directory)

Go back to the gui (Ctrl+Alt+F7) and log in again.

[Champlin93]

Deleting my .cache/sessions did nothing. Isn't there a command other than --sync that shows more detail?

[Toz]

It should log error messages to ~/.xsession-errors. Check there.

You might also want to rename your ~/.config/xfce4 directory (to ~/.config/xfce.BAK) from tty1. This will remove all your settings and when you re-login, Xfce will re-create it's configuration files (in case there is something corrupt there). Just note that all your configuration settings will be reset.