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dcates1
April 13th, 2009, 12:05 AM
I need to ask for some help as I'm an absolute novice at Ubuntu.

I was sure that I did this by loading something that I should not have.
The error I got was

"Unable to start the settings manager 'gnome-settings-daemon'.
Without the GNOME settings manager running, some preferences may not take effect. This could indicate a problem with Bonobo, or a non-GNOME (e.g. KDE) settings manager may already be active and conflicting with the GNOME settings manager."

I could not use most of the pulldown menu options becuse of this.

So I completely reloaded Ubuntu from the setup disk and everything worked just fine, then I clicked on the auto update icon and let it apply the updates. When it said to restart I let it. Now the desktop is broken again, with the same error.

If I remember correctly this happened the first time right after an update. But I had been messing with stuff and didn't connect the two.

Many thanks for any help you can give me.

Dan

tommcd
April 13th, 2009, 01:06 AM
What version of Ubuntu are you using? Are you using Gnome or KDE?
If using Gnome, boot to recovery mode. Then run:

sudo mv /home/your_user_name/.gnome2 /home/your_user_name/.gnome2.bak
Then reboot. This will create a new .gnome2 directory with the default settings. If this doesn't clear up the problem, boot to recovery mode again and run:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop
This only applies if you use gnome.

dcates1
April 13th, 2009, 02:17 AM
I'm using 8.10 with the standard gnome desktop. I'll give these suggetions a try.

Thanks Dan

dcates1
April 13th, 2009, 12:00 PM
I tried these fix's but didn't change anything, still not working.

Was there a particular update that shouldn't have loaded?

If so can some one tell what it was so i can by pass it.( there were 297 updates for the initial install)

tommcd
April 14th, 2009, 02:35 AM
There was a bug report about this. It was supposed to have been "fixed" with an update somewhere along the line:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-settings-daemon/+bug/272093
As a possible work around, try opening a terminal and run:

gnome-settings-daemon
and see if that gets your desktop back in order. If you can't open the applications > accessories menu, then hit alt + F2 and enter gnome-settings-daemon there and hit enter.
Another possible fix is described in post #15 of this thread:
http://ubuntu-virginia.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=955679
That thread may be a bit out of date for this issue; but you could try it if nothing else works. Undo that fix if it does not help.