[ubuntu-uk] Lost desktop not loading at startup

[Paul Tansom]

** scoundrel50a <scoundrel50a at gmail.com> [2011-11-08 19:18]:
> On 08/11/11 15:05, Colin Law wrote:
> >On 8 November 2011 14:46, scoundrel50a<scoundrel50a at gmail.com>  wrote:
> >>Hi, I have lost my desktop, it wont load when you start the laptop up. Its a
> >>lanovo 550 pentium 11.10 preinstalled.....I just had a freeze, restarted and
> >>the desktop went, I went into Ctrl+Alt+F2, and ran the command unity
> >>  ---resetand got the message 'Warning: no DISPLAY variable set, setting it
> >>to :0 unity-panel-service: no process found.......anybody know how I can get
> >>around that...
> >When you say the desktop is gone do you get the normal logon screen
> >and then the problem is after logon?
> >Do you mean the complete desktop is gone or just the launcher and
> >panel?  What exactly do you see on the screen?
> >What happens if you do Ctrl+Alt+T
> >
> >Colin
> >
> Hi, thanks for your reply.....well I get a log in screen, I get the
> music, then the background picture appears, and then nothing
> else.....I tried that Ctrl+Alt+T and the terminal appeared......
** end quote [scoundrel50a]

I had something like this after taking a look at what Unity settings could be
changed using Compiz. You could try the following:

Open up the terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T and install the Compiz Settings Manager
with:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Run the Compiz Settings Manager with:

ccsm

and make sure that in the Desktop section the Ubuntu Unity Plugin is enabled.
If not tick it. There will be some conflicts mentioned, and I'm not sure
whether I have mine right or not as there are issues with colours on my menu
bars (the maximise, minimise, etc. are greyed or coloured and don't change and
I've not worked out what decides what they are yet). This has got my desktop
working again though. Oddly I found it didn't survive a reboot initially, but
when I made the change, logged out and back in immediately after and then
rebooted straight away it stuck!

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