Ubuntu
unity package

update made my icons go away

Asked by Jessica Borre

I clicked the update that Ubuntu sent me on start up (I think 11.1) and after the computer finished I restarted and now all of my icons are gone. I have nothing on the left hand side, no internet, no files/folders. Also gone are the icons on the top of the screen...I can't even power down unless I press Ctrl-Alt-Del. I am very computer illiterate and don't know what to try.

Thanks,

Jessica

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Chris (fabricator4) said : 		#1

It sounds like you did a distribution upgrade from 11.04 (or earlier) to 11.10. It was one of the most problematic upgrades because of the migration to Gnome 3.

You can reset Unity which will hopefully fix your problem. First open up a terminal by pressing <ctrl><alt>t

When the window opens type in the following:
unity --reset

You may then also need to reset the launcher icons. Type:
unity --reset-icons

You might then need to log out of Unity completely and log back in again.

If you still have problems there is a more powerful reset:

gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/compiz-1
gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/compizconfig-1
unity --reset

You have to type all three lines one after the other. Things may disappear or otherwise get weird after you type the first line and will stay that way until you do the final unity --reset. Just keep going a type all three lines.

This is standard information from here: http://www.webupd8.org/2011/04/how-to-reset-unity-launcher-icons-or.html that has got a lot of people out of trouble.

Chris.

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Chris (fabricator4) said : 		#2

BTW you don't need to <ctrl><alt><del> to reboot. Just open a terminal window as before and type

sudo reboot

and the machine will shutdown and restart. To turn it off completely from command line do:

sudo halt -p

Chris

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