Comment 13 for bug 880917

Yes the problem still exists in a slightly different form:

I originally upgraded from 11.10 to 12.04 LTS Beta 1. The system worked reasonably well, except for loosing HDMI sound.

All upgrades have been installed and all seemed fine, last update was yesterday, this morning the system would not start.

What happened , It booted asked for password accepted the password as OK, then showed the screen background without any top panel or Launcher. No amount of clicking would bring them back, right click provides the allows for changing desktop bacground as well as create new folder, and starting new document.

I tried the new document, it offered to open with gedit, or another choice, so I went looking for Libre Office and the empty document was opened, I entered a few words and saved the file. The I closed it and tried to open a spreadsheet. There was no access to the spreadsheet file.

Then I tried to open the untitled document with Firefox, it started and had access to the web.

I can through this process start any program listed in the list of othe applications.

I am at a loss as to how to get my system back, pleas help.