scrambled desktops - again, and again, and again

[rikona]

Hello compdoc,

First, thanks for the reply.

Monday, November 18, 2013, 4:59:36 AM, compdoc wrote:

>>Which logs might give useful info?
>>
>>Many thanks for a fix...

> The first thing I would do is check your hard drive's SMART info to
> see if your hard drive is failing.

Agreed - that is one of the first things I did. :-) I usually use
diskutility - it gives a bunch of smart info. The disk seems fine -
passed, no errors at all - it is a pretty new disk. When I saw your
note I wondered if smartctl might give more info. For some strange
reason, I got 'command not found' when I tried to run it. So, I
installed Gsmartcontrol, and it gives about the same info - everything
fine, no errors or faults ever triggered. Then, wondering about the
'command not found', I ran smartctl again and it did run then. Also
gives the same info.

If you need to see the info for something more subtle, though, let me
know and I'll send it.

One thought - although running Ubuntu, I like a number of KDE items
[konq is my most used file manager], and thus much of KDE is probably
installed. But this has NOT happened with any KDE pgm. Could there be
some hidden interactions going on, though? Probably grasping at
straws, but I'm out of ideas....

Thanks.

-- 

 rikona