Lost desktop functionality in Natty

Jim Byrnes jf_byrnes at comcast.net
Thu Jun 2 00:30:46 UTC 2011


I installed Natty/Unity on my Thinkpad Edge shortly after it was 
released. Since then I have been experimenting trying to find some 
combination of settings that I feel comfortable using. Up until today I 
hadn't done anything I couldn't reverse, but now I've managed to mess it 
up pretty good.

I figured out how to make the icons on the Launcher smaller.  Then I 
decided to enable the compiz cube and that's when the trouble started. I 
followed the popup dialogs to disable the wall and enable the cube but 
ended up with the bar at the top of the screen becoming visually 
corrupted.  To the left it was just multicolored lines, in the center 
was a small multicolored box and to the right it was opaque. I managed 
to restart the computer.

When it finished booting all I saw was my desktop background, no 
launcher and no bar at the top.  The only things that worked was F1 for 
help, right-click on the desktop raised the popup about creating folders 
etc and ctrl-alt-del popped up a menu to restart or shutdown. The 
windows key, esc or touching the left edge with the mouse pointer all 
would not work.

Has anyone been able to recover from a situation like this?

Thanks,  JIm





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