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seragx99
February 22nd, 2011, 05:41 PM
I recently installed Ubuntu 10.10 on my laptop and it was running all smoothly, but all of a sudden when i booted, the only thing i could see were the desktop wallpaper and mouse icon, no panels, no shortcuts, nothing, meaning i can do pretty much nothing, i can move the mouse but can't click anything, the last thing i did was download and goof around with compiz and i was too happy because it worked and looked really great, even though i didn't want to activate restricted drivers for my ATI video chipset, but again, it was working cool and then boom, only wallpaper and mouse, nothing more, please help!


Laptop Sony VPCEE27FL AMD Athlon II 2.1 ghz (64) 4gb RAM

FoxEWolf
February 22nd, 2011, 05:50 PM
Press ALT+F2 to bring the run dialog box up. select terminal.

in terminal: type


gconftool-2 –-shutdown (enter)


gconftool –-recursive-unset /apps/panel (enter)


rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/panel (enter)


pkill gnome-panel (enter)

NOTE!!!: This will restore the panels to their default settings. I am not sure about your desktop icons though.

seragx99
February 23rd, 2011, 02:53 AM
I logged in, tried to run terminal but it doesn't show up, firefox did and here i am, by the way i already tried the recovery console but it doesn't even load, it just gets hung, please help! thanks for the reply : )

Hakunka-Matata
February 23rd, 2011, 02:57 AM
try
Ctrl Alt T for a terminal while in GDM

FoxEWolf
February 23rd, 2011, 05:36 PM
try
Ctrl Alt T for a terminal while in GDM

Yeah... That actually is the better way to get to the terminal. Well I can't always be right. (humble IT moment)

Hakunka-Matata
February 23rd, 2011, 09:30 PM
Ctrl - Alt - T


Yeah... That actually is the better way to get to the terminal. Well I can't always be right. (humble IT moment)

@FoxEWolf, not to worry, I was using Alt F2 myself until recently, when I saw the 'Ctrl Alt T' posted in these forums a few days ago. Thought I'd share. It IS about open source, isn't it?

seragx99
February 23rd, 2011, 09:39 PM
No good, tried the CTRl Alt T and nothing, a friend told me to go ctrl alt f5, it only showed the flashing cursor but no option to login and hence no chance to write anything, it's getting creepy : s

Hakunka-Matata
February 23rd, 2011, 09:56 PM
sorry to hear that, works for me: Ubuntu 10.10 32bit Desktop

seragx99
February 24th, 2011, 02:13 AM
I'm sorry too : s anymore clues guys?

Hakunka-Matata
February 24th, 2011, 02:25 AM
What is your current condition? Are you able to get into a Terminal?

Hakunka-Matata
February 24th, 2011, 02:29 AM
Of course you need to be able to get to a Terminal to run it.............


gconftool-2 --shutdown

rm -rf ~/.gconf/apps/panel

pkill gnome-panel

that has always fixed my missing panel problem, I've used it many times.

seragx99
February 25th, 2011, 08:17 PM
Nope. I'm simply thinking of reinstalling everything.

Hakunka-Matata
February 25th, 2011, 08:25 PM
Have you tried booting to the recovery mode? Holding down Shift key during boot should open the Grub menu when it gets that far, in case you didn't know. If you can get there you may be able to boot to an earlier kernel or to recovery mode.

viipu
February 26th, 2011, 06:03 AM
So you can't get the Virtual Console running? Can you right-click on the desktop? Cause I had a similar situation just today, and those two were the only things that actually worked. If they don't, seems like you might be in big trouble (or maybe your shortcuts have been thoroughly raped?).

Maybe you could try getting a Live CD (USB) and booting through that, get the user config files and post them here? Altho, if it's a new install anyhow maybe you won't mind doing it all over again :P

What worked for me: Virtual Console: [CTRL]+[ALT]+[F2] (Technically anything between F1 and F6, altho I think F1 is special somehow)
If it loads up (takes a few seconds for me at least), log in (as admin), then type



sudo apt-get install --reinstall gdm && sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm

Reconfigures the Gnome Display Manager, for me at least brought all my previous settings back but left the problematic clock app out. I've got a bare desktop to begin with so no idea what it does to your icons and shortcuts, sorry.

Typically just made a whole thread about the same thing and only then found this. But mine's here (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1695471), anyhow.

Hope you manage to fix it!