GUI Elements Missing

Hello, and thanks in advance.

I've just got my new Raspberry Pi (Model B) and successfully flashed the latest Raspbian image to a 4GB SD Card. I hooked up the Pi to my 32" TV via HDMI and connected a USB keyboard and mouse to the Pi. The Pi successfully booted up and I was able to login successfully. When I entered "startx" into the prompt it appeared to run successfully and I had a mouse cursor and the Raspberry background image, but no other GUI elements, such as the taskbar or any files on the desktop. I searched the forums for the issue but haven't found anyone who shares this problem. Please advise.

It sounds as if there may be a problem with the screen resolution and the other elements are off-screen. You may find this thread to be of help.

I have this problem too!

Glad I've found someone else that has the problem too!

I really don't know what's wrong with it, I have flashed my SD multiple times, used different cards, changed the power supply, used different tv's changed the resolution on the tv's etc. I just can't make it work!

It sounds as if there may be a problem with the screen resolution and the other elements are off-screen. You may find this thread to be of help.

Thanks for your help itimpi. However, I don't believe that is the problem, because the command line interface conforms to the screen perfectly with no text running off screen and no empty border around the screen. I will look over the suggestions in that thread and try them out though.

I have this problem too!

Glad I've found someone else that has the problem too!

Glad to see I'm not the only one!

What is the native resolution of your TV? From /var/log/Xorg.0.log it looks like the Pi might not actually read the edid of the display, but bases it on the frame buffer mode of the console (whatever that defaults to or set in /boot/config.txt).

Does your TV have any mode to fill the screen, which my LG calls "Just Scan" or little Samsung calls "Fill Screen"? If frequencies are not perfect, those may tend to more perfectly fill the screen without overscan than something like a 16:9 setting, at least for my 1080p LG and Samsung. 1080p just works with nothing more audio/visual related in /boot/config.txt other than disable_overscan=1.

For other resolutions you may need to test more specific settings: http://elinux.org/RPiconfig

Does your TV have any mode to fill the screen, which my LG calls "Just Scan" or little Samsung calls "Fill Screen"? If frequencies are not perfect, those may tend to more perfectly fill the screen without overscan than something like a 16:9 setting, at least for my 1080p LG and Samsung. 1080p just works with nothing more audio/visual related in /boot/config.txt other than disable_overscan=1.

Thanks for your reply efflandt. I looked through my TV's settings (Sony Bravia 32" 720p) and saw two "fill mode" options, both of which only slightly affected the overall output on the screen, no matter whether overscan was enabled or disabled. Again, I don't think this is the root of the problem because the command line interface perfectly conforms to the TV without any text running off the screen. I may be wrong though, as I have very limited experience with Linux and the Pi. Is there any reason the GUI would be outputting at a different resolution/dimension than the command line?

Everywhere I have looked people are saying it must be to do with the overscan, but it seems like a fairly unique problem, and I have now tried it in 3 different TV's, all gave me the same problem!

I tried:

50" LG
42" Panasonic
22" Toshiba

My terminal also displays fine, it just doesn't start the desktop properly!

I don't know how to change the overscan on the Pi anyway, but I did try changing the TV's settings but still had the same problem!

Theres a load of overscan info on the wiki If you changed TV and its the same I would strongly suspect overscan.

Theres a load of overscan info on the wiki If you changed TV and its the same I would strongly suspect overscan.

Ah, I think I get it now. So you're saying I should change the overscan settings for the bottom and left and then it should display all the GUI elements properly?

Give it a try you can allways undo the changes.

@WJacobC did that work for you? It didn't for me :/

@WJacobC did that work for you? It didn't for me :/

Haven't gotten a chance to try it yet, but I'll report back soon.

I am looking into differences brought about by having two hardware issues. 256Mb and 512Mb

Back with a status update:
Good news! I've got all the GUI elements back. In exacerbation I decided to reflash my SD card and realized that I had prematurely ejected the SD card the first time 'round. So I waited until I got the notification that the SD card had fully been flashed before I removed it, and voila! Fully functioning GUI. Sorry for all the trouble when it was really just operator error. Thanks for all your help everyone.

I wish that everyone be granted the great gift of patience but please note

I WANT MY GIFT NOW!!

So you didn't have to change the overscan or anything?

I have literally reflashed my SD loads of times, and I wait for the messages to pop up etc. I'm just going to buy a new one from Amazon and see if it works...

So you didn't have to change the overscan or anything?

I have literally reflashed my SD loads of times, and I wait for the messages to pop up etc. I'm just going to buy a new one from Amazon and see if it works...

Yeah man, I'm sorry none of this is working... Have you tried using soft-float "wheezy" or RISC OS yet? Maybe your TV(s) don't like hard-float Raspbian.

I've only tried normal Wheezy, Arch Linux and Raspbmc.

Only Raspbmc worked, so I just bought a new SD card, hopefully once I get it, I'll flash it and it'll work.

I've only tried normal Wheezy, Arch Linux and Raspbmc.

Only Raspbmc worked, so I just bought a new SD card, hopefully once I get it, I'll flash it and it'll work.

Alright. Let us know if it works or not. I hope it does!