Desk top missing

[Bart Silverstrim]

Leonard Chatagnier wrote:
> --- Bill Taylor <th1bill at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> 
>> I turned my computer on and my background and the
>> launchers are missing.
>> My task bars are there but just a blue, my choice,
>> desktop, nothing
>> else.  I'm running:
>>
>> Ubuntu 8.04
>> Gnome Desk Top
>> No effects
>>
>> -  
>>                                                     
> Hello Bill.
> I haven't the solution but had the same issue with KDE
> 4.1 desktop on Ubuntu AMD64 8.04.1.  All the files are
> in my $HOME/Desktop folder, every last one of them but
> can't figure how to restore them on the GUI.  Have
> also posted the issue but no response. Tried just
> copying the files to Desktop but you can't copy files
> to same files. My issue happened after a non-lightning
> related power failure. I can log in to kde reg desktop
> and the files/folders are still on the GUI desktop
> just not in KDE 4.1
> There should be be a simple solution to this, IMO, but
> haven't found it.  Maybe some kde users like Derek can
> offer some help to us, hopefully. 

What I would probably end up doing is create a new *administrative* 
user (so the new userid can sudo). Log in as the new user, copy the 
previous user directory to the new user directory (like under a ~/temp 
folder or ~/oldhome). Then use the utilities to delete the old user, and 
recreate the old username as an administrative user and copy the old 
data to the now recreated username.

It may not restore the data to the exact same state, but it may fix the 
problem you're seeing. Using chown -R back to the proper ownership after 
each step should give you access to your data.

That's one possible fix, though.