no icons, no menus- just purple galaxy background screen

**t3ubu** · October 19th, 2011

Hi all,

I've been happily running Ubuntu Netbook remix on a Lenovo S10 for a couple of years- letting update manager notify, and then take care of any upgrades, changes etc. Today, I selected Yes to recommended updgrades (including the 'suggested' ones); but...rebooted only to find no desktop icons, no menu bar...nothing except the purple galaxy in the background plus a couple of status icons in the top RHS corner (indicating internet connection, bluetooth, chat options and then the circle icon allowing me to restart, shutdown etc). This is weird!@@

I've never had a problem with recommended upgrades using upgrade manager- but now...nothing but purple galaxy. Any leads on how to fix this?

My GRUB loader screen indicates 10.04.3 LTS Kernel 6.32-34 on the top line; tried booting in safe mode: same 'blank' screen as above. Then tried rebooting with other releases a couple of lines down on the loader: still the same 'blank' background.

Any leads to a fix would be appreciated. This is a first for me...so I'm stumped.

**Chtfn** · October 19th, 2011

Same happened to me on a Dell Inspiron Mini today, rebooting after the updates were installed.
No access to the menu, but the wifi still connects.
As I don't have any other shortcuts on the panel, I can't access Firefox nor Nautilus.
Any keyboard shortcut we can use to at least save data on a EHD?