Something has corrupted my Ubuntu desktop

[carml]

I meant that from there you can choose also your theme look,but don't know if it helps anyway.

[shelbyvision]

I re-installed metacity with synaptic, and since I restarted the computer, the windows now have a normal bar at the top. That's all that changed. That's a good start. The BIG problem is the behaviour of the touchpad, and especially the way that any click on a menu item requires a very long wait until anything happens. Maybe there some things for those problems that should be re-installed?

[shelbyvision]

I was able to fix one more thing: the touchpad. I reinstalled gsynaptics, and installed gsynaptics-mcs-plugin, then had to add a line to xorg.config. That gives me a way to adjust the behaviour of the touchpad, like getting rid of that annoying tap mode.
I still have the biggest and most perplexing problem: every time a menu item is clicked, instead of getting instant results, it takes several seconds. since a lot of processes require many menu clicks, this makes things v-e-r-y s-l-o-w . For some reason, anything clicked WITHIN A WEB PAGE works with normal speed. The same goes for working within Thunderbird email. This is probably a clue, but I don't understand it.
Steve

[carml]

Did you try to choose on boot the recovery mode? If you have got only Ubuntu press Escto open the menu of kernels on boot and choose Recovery,so you can check for brken packages and attempt to repair them.

[shelbyvision]

No, I haven't, but I have used synaptic to look for broken packages, and it showed none. Would recovery mode give different results?
Steve

[VastOne]

No, I haven't, but I have used synaptic to look for broken packages, and it showed none. Would recovery mode give different results?
Steve

Since there was a kernel update, can you boot into your previous kernel and tell us the results there?

[shelbyvision]

Since there was a kernel update, can you boot into your previous kernel and tell us the results there?

I tried the previous kernel (2.6.24-23) and the one before that (2.6.22-16), no difference. I also tried 2.6.24-24 recovery mode, and tried fix broken packages, and nothing changed.
Steve

[carml]

Maybe yes,the recovery option checks all the dependences and fix the broken packages if there are any.

[shelbyvision]

Well, I tried it and it didn't change anything.
Steve