Sorry if this was posted before, but I just joined the list. Did you try bringing up a terminal, or using the F2 run command, to restart the desktop with 'plasma-desktop' ? Although backing up the entire .kde directory is good, I do that regularly before upgrades to make recovery easier. <div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Nigel Ridley <<a href="mailto:nigel@prayingforisrael.net">nigel@prayingforisrael.net</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"> I just had a slight major problem: I had just closed Firefox and the window turned white but did not close. The close button was unresponsive so I pressed 'Alt + Ctrl + Esc' and got the 'skull and crossbones' which I then moved into the [white] Firefox window and clicked - apparently Firefox wasn't actually there - but the Plasma desktop was! I killed the Plasma Desktop and no matter what I tried - logout; reboot; cold reboot - the desktop wouldn't load - just a black screen :-( So I did a 'Alt + Ctrl + Delete' and got the 'Leave' options; logged out and then a 'Alt + Ctrl + F1' to get to TTY1; logged in and then 'mv .kde kdeOLD' - logged out, 'Alt + Ctrl + F7' and logged into a brand new Plasma desktop :-) I then spent half an hour getting my dektop the way I like it, then I copied my new .kde to another folder, renamed it .kdeGOOD and copied it back into my home folder. Now if I managed to mess things up again I can just rename my .kdeGOOD to .kde and everything should be good again.... Hope this helps someone else. Nigel -- kubuntu-users mailing list <a href="mailto:kubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com" target="_blank">kubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com</a> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/kubuntu-users" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/kubuntu-users</a> </blockquote></div> -- no .sig found Please restart your browser.