Ubuntu
unity package

Missing launcher, menu bar and window borders

Asked by Thomas George

Hi,

I just updated to Ubuntu 12.04, and at the same time, updated my NVIDIA drivers to the one that said "current" and [Recommended] using "additional drivers" under "hardware" menu. In retrospect, I should have made the changes separately, but now when I log in, It takes a while, an the screen blanks out a few times, and when it finally loads, I don't have the launcher on the left or the menu bar on top. Plus the windows have no borders or top-bars to minimize, close etc. On top of that, for the most part, the keyboard doesn't work either, though I can get it to work after some time.

If I go into settings (which itself is hard without the launcher) and disable the NVIDIA driver and restart, everything loads normally, except that the screen resolution is all off, and everything runs slower.

I tried everything I could find online, including creating desktop shortcuts for "terminal" and "ccsm", and have tried enabling "unity". I also did a "unity --reset" on the terminal, and it gives pages and pages of errors and ends with "Warn: this should never happen. you should probably file a bug about this.
Segmentation fault (core dumped)"

I don't know what to do. I use a AMD64 system. Please help!

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Revision history for this message
marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#1

Please try to activate the "proposed" packages from update-manager properties and then try to upgrade your system... it may help

Revision history for this message
Thomas George (t-george78) said : 		#2

Thank you for your response Marco. I tried that, but it made no difference.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#3

Can you give the output of:

sudo lshw -C display; lsb_release -a; uname -a; dpkg -l | grep nvidia

Thanks

Revision history for this message
Thomas George (t-george78) said : 		#4

sudo lshw -C display

  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430]
       vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
       physical id: d
       bus info: pci@0000:00:0d.0
       version: a2
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 66MHz
       capabilities: pm msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
       resources: irq:23 memory:fc000000-fcffffff memory:e0000000-efffffff memory:fb000000-fbffffff memory:80000000-8001ffff

-------------------------------

lsb_release -a

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
Release: 12.04
Codename: precise

----------------------------------

uname -a

Linux Thomas-desktop 3.2.0-24-generic #37-Ubuntu SMP Wed Apr 25 08:43:22 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

-------------------------------

dpkg -l | grep nvidia

rc nvidia-173 173.14.30-0ubuntu8.1 NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library
ii nvidia-common 1:0.2.44 Find obsolete NVIDIA drivers
ii nvidia-current 295.40-0ubuntu1 NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library
rc nvidia-current-updates 295.40-0ubuntu1 NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library
ii nvidia-settings 295.33-0ubuntu1 Tool of configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver
ii nvidia-settings-updates 295.33-0ubuntu1 Tool of configuring the NVIDIA graphics driver

---------------------------------

Hope this helps. Thanks.

-Thomas

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Thomas George (t-george78) said : 		#5

Anything I can try? I still cannot do anything on my computer.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#6

could press Ctrl+Alt+F1 and run:

killall -u $USER

This wil log your user off. Try logging into Unity2D session.

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Thomas George (t-george78) said : 		#7

That worked. I have the windows and launcher back. Thank you! Is that my permanent solution?

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rik (rikkroondijk) said : 		#8

Unity 2D works for me, cheers

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Linux Nutjob (linuxnutjob) said : 		#9

After running 12.04 for about 2 weeks now, the same thing just happened to me last night. I reverted to 2D to undo some installs that I had just done, to no avail. What happened to the window manager and launcher?? Going 2D is a temporary fix, but not one that I am going to stay with. I can still open apps with the terminal, but no more HUD or launcher or anything... just the background and a few icons on the desktop.

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Linux Nutjob (linuxnutjob) said : 		#10

Has anyone found a fix for this or even knows what this is yet?? Thanks.

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