Panel will not come out of hiding

[Ray Parrish]

Hello,

When I booted up the first time today Ubuntu wasn't in a co-operative 
mood. I have my panels set to auto hide and when I tried to get the top 
panel to come out so I could start Thunderbird it would not slide out. I 
tried ALT-F2 to get the run box, and it wouldn't come up either.

So, I tried CTRL-ALT-Backspace to log out and back in, and this time I 
couldn't even see the edge of the top panel which normally sticks out 
ever so slightly when it's hidden. I'm very new to Ubuntu, [since 
August] so I didn't know what else to try. Out of desperation I tried 
the old Windows ALT-CTRL-DEL trick, and after a pause for 15 seconds or 
so the normal shutdown dialog appeared, and I clicked the restart button.

I waited quite a while and it didn't shut down, so I resorted to a hard 
power down and restarted in the next previous kernel for Linux and 
things were back to normal.

What the heck happened there? I made some changes to the compiz settings 
last night before shutting down, and also changed the resolution setting 
for the boot up screen using the Start up Manager on the menu. Do 
settings made while booted into one kernel stick when you boot to a 
previous one?

I also want to ask if there is a keyboard command that will force the 
top panel to appear? In Windows when I couldn't get the menu I could use 
CTRL-ESC to force it to appear, but that didn't work when I tried it in 
Ubuntu.

Let me know if there is something I need to fix before I reboot to the 
newest kernel again. The newest kernel I have here on Hardy is 
2.6.24-22-generic and I'm currently running in 2.6.24-21-generic.

Thanks for any help you can be. Later, Ray Parrish

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