All my icons are gone!

[Joe Schmoe]

Latest version of Raspbian - everything working fine - right up - until!

Using "startx" to get into the GUI and using the GUI pretty much exclusively - mostly light browsing (using Epiphany).

After running for a while (a few weeks), all of a sudden, all the desktop icons are gone - no way to start anything up - not even a terminal. All you see on the screen is a Trash Can and the big raspberry (background). Right clicking just gets a menu of things like cutting and pasting and new folders.

The only way to get a terminal going (so that you can run stuff) is to go to another tty (e.g., another virtual console or ssh in) and launch lxterminal with the DISPLAY set to :0.

Anyway to quickly fix this - get the icons back - without re-imaging?

Note: This happened after a power cut, so it could be some form of SD card corruption.

Also note: The implication here is that it is probably not worth re-imaging - it is actually workable as is - but if there is some easy fix, I'd like to try it.

[gordon77]

Have you got a taskbar ? If not has it moved off the screen ?, if you move the mouse cursor near the edge does it appear ?

[Joe Schmoe]

Is there some way to re-install the "desktop" ?

That is, some sort of:

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apt-get remove ...

apt-get install ...

sequence...?

[DougieLawson]

Re-install raspberrypi-ui-mods

[Joe Schmoe]

Re-install raspberrypi-ui-mods

Thanks. Yeah, I thought that it was something like that.

I'll let you know if it works...

[rpdom]

Pressing Alt-F2 should bring up the "Run command" dialogue box, so you can start a terminal from there until you get it fixed. (At least I think this works on lxde, it is pretty standard across DEs).

[Joe Schmoe]

Pressing Alt-F2 should bring up the "Run command" dialogue box, so you can start a terminal from there until you get it fixed. (At least I think this works on lxde, it is pretty standard across DEs).

Yes, that works. Thanks.

BTW, here's another thing that's funny. Normally, the right click menu In GUIs gives you a way to run stuff, but here (in the Raspbian GUI), the right click menu is useless (some stupid stuff about "folders", whatever that means...). But, interestingly, there is an option buried in that (otherwise useless) menu that brings up a "configuration" menu, and, amazingly, there is an option buried somewhere in that "configuation" menu that switches the "right click" menu to something useful. That "something useful" allows you to run stuff (Terminal, web browser). So, doing all that turned out to be my "quick fix" to this problem.

[Joe Schmoe]

Re-install raspberrypi-ui-mods

I tried this, but it didn't change anything.

Alas...

[Joe Schmoe]

Re-install raspberrypi-ui-mods

I tried this, but it didn't change anything.

Alas...

An update. I finally got around to fixing this (this is on a client machine - somehow the client managed to f*** it up)

Anyway, the fix is to refresh (from a working machine) this file:

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~/.config/lxpanel/LXDE-pi/panels/panel

Then re-start the GUI. Icons are back.

I figured this out from "man lxpanel" and a lot of trial-and-error.

[pcote_pi]

Allo,

Lost my icons too. The pi was running for a few days and suddenly all the icons disapear. I rebooted and they came back. This happens 2015-06-12. The PI2 was updated the day before.

[madtom1999]

And ifr you havent got a working machine to copy from?

[madtom1999]

Ah worked it out.
In a terminal:
sudo adduser temp
fill in details as reqd
You then need to log in as temp and go into LXDE destop so it creates the default panels file
you may need to sudo raspi-config
so you can login as temp
then login to your normal user and copy the new one over
sudo cp /home/temp/.config/lxpanel/LXDE-pi/panels/panel ~/.config/lxpanel/LXDE-pi/panels/panel
then set yourself as owner of the file
sudo chown pi ~/.config/lxpanel/LXDE-pi/panels/panel

if you've set an easy password on temp then use sudo deluser temp to clear it out or set it to something secure.

[Jabulon]

Help pls. How do i enter into LXDE? When i use "startx" i get errors.

I have the same issue all icons are gone and startup scripts do not initiate.

[werejag]

tried what madtom1999 said but i still cant get the + - X in the corner of each client windows to come back. any sugestions? what is this called anyways if i had teh term i could maybe google it

[IanPP]

Hello,

me happened the same, i just ran a

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sudo dpkg --configure -a

to fix the packages.
If to you it don't works, try to run

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sudo apt update

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sudo apt upgrade

And, if necessary, run again

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sudo dpkg --configure -a

I hope it works
IanPP