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I'm not sure which update did it - but at some point recently something broke my Desktop. I now have a grey background (instead of the gradient colour I had before) and no Desktop icons. Right clicking on the Desktop doesn't produce a menu any more, either.

My theme, sounds etc all seem to have been forcibly changed as well.

Also, when I attempt to start Phpstorm, it hangs on the splashscreen, and console shows:

Error parsing gtk-icon-sizes string: ''

Anyone have a suggestion how I fix it, or even diagnose what the problem is?

Braiam
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hippyjim
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  • Log out of any graphical sessions, go to a text terminal (alt-ctrl-F1) then switch display managers with the following commands: sudo stop gdm then sudo start lightdm. – horIzoN Mar 10 '13 at 17:23
  • Thanks nerof61 - unfortunately it made no difference. gdm wasn't running, and restarting lightdm had no effect. Any other ideas? – hippyjim Mar 10 '13 at 18:08
  • You could try xfwm4 --replace and/or xfdesktop --reload and see if that helps, but your problem may need more than that to solve it. That error message usually appears if you have a broken theme installed, so there might be some errors in your gtk rc files if you are using custom themes or settings. Are there any clues in your .xsession-errors or .xsession-errors.old? –  Mar 10 '13 at 19:33
  • Are you running Xfce 4.8 (stock version with Precise)? or a later version?, as there was a recent problem with xfdesktop in Xfce 4.10, for which a fix should be available very soon. –  Mar 10 '13 at 23:37

4 Answers4

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I had similar problem with my Xfce. I restarted window manager by typing: xfwm4 --replace but it did not resolved the problem. I checked the xfce troubleshooting section in here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xfce#Troubleshooting and they are also suggest to delete the session folder by typing: rm -r ~/.cache/sessions/ and after that system has to be rebooted, and I have got my desktop back after reboot.

Adam Filipczyk
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If you had a power failure or some other type of system crash, first try this

xfdesktop &

And other obvious fixes such as clearing your session cache...But if you are still unable to get your icons back, then you might try upgrading to the latest xfce version.

I ran into a very similar problem with xubuntu 13.04 this morning. It occurred immediately after an dist-upgrade and subsequent reboot, thought I'm not sure if this caused the problem. I tried all of the suggestions here and in other threads to no avail - with the exception of the last post.

Finally I decided to give upgrading my xfce version a try:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.12

and because it was required per the developers:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.10

Then:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Upon reboot everything was back to normal. I did not have to reinstall any packages, as was the case for others, to get my beloved desktop setting back. This took up most of my day, so I hope this helps someone avoid this particular trouble spot.

Community
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user189860
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I had the same error. I tried to update xfce via ppa:xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.12. But it has only installed some parts. Afterwards xfdesktop was missing.

In my case it just helped to reinstall xfdesktop:

sudo apt-get install xfdesktop4
keiki
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I removed .config/xfce4/ completely After login the default xfce4 dir is created with the correct contents and it is working again.

user9953
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