My desktop icons are gone, and Nautilus won't open to browse files

[Doughy]

I had a bad Nautilus problem come up on my laptop today. All of my desktop icons are gone, although the files are still there when I look from the command line. When I try to go to "Places -> Desktop" or any other folder, it tries to open Nautilus, but then nothing happens. I have tried rebooting, but it's just not working. Any ideas?

Ubuntu 9.10 with integrated Intel graphics.

[MaindotC]

Are you dual booting and if so did you properly shut down Vista?

[jacobs444]

try changing to 1024X768 resolution, if they come back then it is a general error with the driver I believe.

[Doughy]

Are you dual booting and if so did you properly shut down Vista?

Not a dual boot. Only OS installed is Ubuntu 9.10. Also, I tried changing display dimensions, no luck. I don't believe it to be a graphics problem since I can't even run Nautilus to browse files.

[itsjustarumour]

I think I've been having this problem on Jaunty 9.04, straight after some updates 2 or 3 days ago. My system froze, and then the Screenlets on my desktop disappeared. After a reboot, SuperKaramba and AWN disappeared. I tried opening my Home Folder, all my files opened with Gwenview instead of Nautilus. I uninstalled Gwenview, but then my files opened with Dolphin. I tried rebooting again, and I was confronted with just my Desktop wallpaper and the cursor - nothing worked, I couldn't even invoke any programs with keyboard shortcuts.

I hadn't changed any settings or file permissions or anything, this was just a random case of spontaneous config-file corruption. I haven't managed to find a bug report anywhere that relates to this, and I can't file a bug report myself right now as I don't have all the necessary info to describe exactly what happened and why...

The basic problem seems to be that Nautilus isn't starting on login...

I have tried - in turn - recreating the following config files in my Home directory, but this made no difference:

~/.config
~/.gconf
~/.gconfd
~/.nautilus

I did however discover that if I go to ~/.local/share/applications , if I temporarily remove all 4 Nautilus desktop config files (I just created a folder at this location called "NautilusBACKUP" and put them in there), if I log off and on again, my Desktop icons load up. I can also then right mouse-click on the Desktop to fire up a terminal, and from that terminal launch gnome-panel, avant-window-navigator, screenlets etc. My home directory also then opens with Nautilus, rather than Dolphin.

Sorry I can't provide any more concrete info at the moment, but I'm still trying to work out a fix for this. I just thought I'd post up my "interim findings" as I've seen one of two other threads on the forum with peeople having issues that might relate to this...

[Doughy]

I found a fix for this problem. According to this bug report, some gvfs stuff got corrupted: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...fs/+bug/424043

I moved the ~/.local/share/gvfs-metadata to a backup directory and now the problem is fixed.