I have researched this for a few days now and am about to throw in the towel. Maybe you can help. Thank you in advance.

I have installed Ubuntu Desktop 12.04 (32 bit) and Samba and have a simple file server running that I would like to be able to control remotely from a Windows machine. But I want to be able to control it by a graphical interface - not by terminal. I can access it by remote desktop as well as vnc client, but the remote desktop doesn't work correctly (no desktop icons and compiz crashes) and if I use a VNC client, there has to be someone logged into the server. This means that if I reboot the Ubuntu system, I can't log into it remotely until I log into it locally, which means that I can't run it headless, which is really my goal.

I am not very good with Ubuntu or Linux, but have learned enough to get to this point. Can you help me get over this hurdle?

I'm sure I've left out pertinent details - let me know what matters and I'll fill you in. Any ideas? Thanks!