system admin missing

are you able to launch a shell (terminal) and type gnome-control-center ? and if so, can you see the System tools?

Hey Bruno,
Can launch terminal, but can't see system tools.
I can open system settings, but under systen section all I have is backup, details, management service, time & date, universal access and user accounts.

try this (in the order given)

http://ubuntugenius.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/missing-applications-places-or-system-menus-how-to-reset-ubuntus-classic-gnome-23-panel/

None of this in the above article works.
I'm running 12.04 Unity

i.e.

randy@randy-VPCF119GS:~$ killall gnome-panel
gnome-panel: no process found

randy@randy-VPCF119GS:~$ mv ~/.config/menus/applications.menu ~/.config/menus/applications.menu.bak && mv ~/.config/menus/settings.menu ~/.config/menus/settings.menu.bak
mv: cannot stat `/home/randy/.config/menus/applications.menu': No such file or directory

try:

gnome-panel&

Bruno,
Here's something interesting. I just did an install of 12.10 to an external drive and booted from this new install. It appears that administrative tools is not part of system settings.
So maybe we're barking up the wrong tree?

Just tried you last suggestion as well and got

The program 'gnome-panel' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install gnome-panel

yes, please do a sudo apt-get install gnome-panel
then gnome-panel&
then back to trying the ideas in http://ubuntugenius.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/missing-applications-places-or-system-menus-how-to-reset-ubuntus-classic-gnome-23-panel/

followed those steps. still to no avail. the install appears to have worked, but doesn't seem to want to do the rest.

then I found this:

http://ubuntugenius.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/ubuntu-11-04-fix-add-the-classic-gnome-menu-applicationssystemwine-to-the-unity-panel-system-tray/

excellent: bravo :-)