Pidgin not showing up after opening it

Question

I am on Ubuntu 11.10. I have installed Pidgin right after installing 11.10. As far as I remember everything worked great. However, for a while now (in the mean time I did some video drivers installation) every time I open Pidgin from the system tray, it's icon appears on the Unity launcher, but the window doesn't open.

I have managed to find only one pattern of steps which opens me the pidgin window:

Open pidgin from system tray. Icon appears on Unity launcher
Right click on the icon, quit.
Open pidgin again from system tray. Icon appears
Change my workspace to any other
Press the icon form the pannel
I am getting switched back to the original workspace and the Pidgin application finally opens.

It's a little frustrating....what do you suggest I should try?

In the mean time I found out that I can skip steps 4 and 5. Still frustrating a bit, but got used to it. Actually the answer I have accepted here didn't solve the problem. — bioShark, May 11 '12 at 12:59
yes. i too tried reinstalling it but the problem remains. I'm using Ubuntu 12.04. — John Eipe, May 12 '12 at 06:45
you can open this question again right? by deselecting the answer. — John Eipe, May 12 '12 at 06:46
I'm having this same issue. This question is related (same problem) but it got closed: http://askubuntu.com/questions/76414/no-pidgin-main-window-on-first-open — Gabriel, Jul 31 '12 at 14:35
I too have the same problem. However I don't need to change workspace, I just close it on Launcher and then open it again. — Neptunno, Jul 31 '12 at 14:49

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 10 '12 at 18:47

5

A way to stop the unretrievable behavior:

Follow the instructions in the original question above in order to get to the buddy list.

Go to Menu > Tools > Preferences

Set "Show System Tray Icon" to "Always"

answered Sep 10 '12 at 18:47

Kzqai

553

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 14 '13 at 17:13

3

What worked for me, was to remove ~/.purple/prefs.xml. Lost lots of preferences (groups and stuff), but at least, the window returned.

edited Aug 14 '13 at 17:13

Braiam

67,791
32
179
269

answered Aug 14 '13 at 12:33

Ketil

31
1

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 27 '13 at 19:22

2

This issue has been reported as a bug here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/1001405

edited Mar 27 '13 at 19:22

Seth

58,122

answered Jul 31 '12 at 14:39

Gabriel

2,453
7
32
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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 13 '11 at 16:42

0

try to remove it and then install it again to make it back to the default settings

answered Nov 13 '11 at 16:42

Muhammad Jawabreh

31

Yeap. It worked. Sometimes the most obvious actions are the solutions. Thanks for pointing that out to me. – bioShark Nov 13 '11 at 16:52
glad to hear that :) – Muhammad Jawabreh Nov 13 '11 at 16:54

Pidgin not showing up after opening it

4 Answers4

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