after upgrade no icons or wallpaper

Are you runnig Gnome (i.e. Ubuntu) or KDE (i.e. Gnome)?

Sorry, I mean Gnome (Ubuntu) or KDE (KUbuntu).
Can you try to start a failsafe session (click in the login shell on "Session" or so and choose "failsafe")? That's a minimalistic interface that's fail-safe.

Hi, when you are booting up do you get a menu with Ubuntu listed several times and one of the items has "Recovery Mode" at the end? It's usually a good option to go for as there is some helpful stuff in there that doesn't just wipe your drive.

Also you're installer disc can be used to bootup from (a LiveCd session) and that can be used to make your data safe. Either by putting it on a new partition or by burning you "/home" folder onto cd/dvds. If you only have 1 cd/dvd drive then it might be better to use a tiny distro (these have a Partition Editor included so it's probably worth getting one of these whichever way you want to go with protecting your data. DistroWatch is a popular place to compare different distros, here's their pages for my personal favourite tiny distros
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wolvix
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slitaz
Slitaz can have it's cd removed even when run as a LiveCd! Wolvix has more teeth ;)

Good luck with this
Regards from
Tom :)

I restarted Ubuntu in recovery mode and ran Xfix. I still have the same problem. I tried several version of Ubuntu and none of them gave me my graphics back.

I will try tiny distro as i only have 1 cd drive.

The reason why I asked you whether failsafe works is that it's useful
1) to back up your data on CD using k3b (btw. you should always back up your data anyway)
and 2) to fix your gnome/KDE through (re)installing packages using adept.

Obviously you can do those things also from command line (go to recovery on boot and then choose root shell, or choose text-based login in the graphical login shell, or press crtl+alt+(F1 through F12) at any time), but it sounds like you are more comfortable with graphical interface tools.

It doesn't sound like an xserver problem, because then you wouldn't get into the graphical login shell.

So the next step would be to check whether your update was successful, and then we could look at a) checking what's broken or b) re-installing

It sounds like JetBundle has a good point and has though the problem through more clearly.

The K3b package in Kubuntu is equivalent to Brasero in Ubuntu, either would be good. Pressing Alt F2 should bring up a pop-up box that you can type "brasero into" and that should bring up the cd/dvd burning program for gnome). Alternatively to run k3b or brasero from the command line remember you can always get help by adding --help to the end, for example

brasero --help

produces a text help guide in the command window. Also not that as you type pressing the Tab key tries to autocomplete what you are typing up until where you have choices at which point double-clicking the Tab key shows a list of those choices. You should be able to get to a command line through using the "Recovery Mode"

If you go with my route of using a tiny distro and want to burn your data to cd then go for SliTaz but Wolvix is easier if you want to use the partitioning plan.

Good luck with this
please keep us informed about how it's going
Regards from
Tom :)

If you are still having trouble with this then please post it as a new question. Only the most recent questions tend to get looked at so posting/reposting a question just before america arrives online gives the best chance of getting a good few answers.

If the problem has been resolved then please follow the link to the forum thread and mark it as Solved.

Good luck and many regards from
Tom :)