System Settings Missing in 12.04

[Colin Law]

On 27 April 2012 17:34, Barry Premeaux <bpremeaux at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>> Do you mean the cog in the top right hand corner is missing, or that
>> System Settings is missing from the drop down from the cog?
>>
>> Are the other items in the top panel ok?  Time, User, Network, Sound etc.
>>
> The cog that was there, while running it live from the CD, isn't there.
> Other items are there as they should be.  Had to log out from my user
> session to get to the user log in screen.  Then, I could do a shut down.
> That is, until that stopped working.
>
> Had some other issues with Unity.  I keep my /home on a separate partition.
> When I do a new install, I reformat /root and simply mount /home.  This has
> worked fine.  There are occasional issues with newer versions of an
> application.  They can be cleared up by simply saving the associated hidden
> directory to a new name and letting the new app restore it.
>
> I was having other issues with the launcher menu.  Missing icons for one.
> The Systems Settings icon was missing, but there was a blank space where it
> was located and a pop up ID.  Click on the blank space and it launches.
> Terminal was the same way.  Not all of the Libreoffice applications were
> available.  Draw and Base were missing.  Installing Libreoffice launcher app
> took care of that issue.  I installed several applications and for some of
> them the icon would say "Waiting to finish install."  Yet, the software
> manager says the installation is complete.  If I reboot, the application is
> ready for use.
>
> Looking for basic accessories, I wanted a calculator app.  The software
> manager says one is installed.  Couldn't get it to launch from the cli, so
> installed KCalc.  It installed fine and was on the launcher panel.  After a
> reboot, the icon disappeared and left me with a blank space and the pop up
> indicating it was there.  Click on the blank space and it launches as it
> should.
>
> I had several application launchers and a couple spreadsheet files in the
> desktop directory that were carried over to this installation.  As the apps
> were installed, they picked up there icons as they should.  But, the
> spreadsheet files didn't pick up the Libreoffice Calc icon that had been
> there prior to this installation.
>
> I finally installed the Xubuntu desktop and everything is back to normal.
> All the applications that are installed can be easily found in the menu.
> The two spreadsheets icons appear on the desktop just as they should.  A
> right click on the desktop gives you easy access to the tools you need to
> manage the system.
>
> For me, Unity just doesn't work.  I had LinuMint 12 loaded, but they were
> getting slow on doing updates to a kernel that had known issues with
> removable flash drives.  I like what I see with Xubuntu.

It sounds like it is too late to try now, but did you keep an existing
/home partition when you installed 12.04?  If so did you have Mint
installed before that?  If so then I wonder whether you had some
incompatible settings in your user directory.  Did you try creating a
new user and seeing if it was ok then?

Colin