Menu bar now missing

[Phil]

Thank you for reading this.

Kubuntu version 15.04

After installing Google Earth the desktop background turned black so I 
rebooted the system. On restart the menu bar (the bar that should be 
across the bottom of the screen) is now missing. This had occurred 
recently, and had nothing to do with Google Earth, so I reinstalled Kubuntu.

That was a bit drastic and probably unnecessary because I seemed that 
all I had to do was rename .kde to .kde_old to get things back into 
shape. I had also renamed .config but I'm not sure if that was fix or 
renaming .kde.

Unfortunately, this time I don't have access to konsole because I cannot 
access the menu. However, I can log in from a laptop using ssh and I did 
rename .kde and it was recreated after a reboot but the menu bar is 
still missing.

Any help to get this going again will be greatly appreciated.

By the way, Thunderbird is the only application that is available to me 
because it was open at the time of the problem.

-- 
Regards,
Phil