Why did you trash .kde4_old?
If your .kde_old is still in the trash:/ restore it. Then mv .kde4_old/ .kde4/ and replace all the files and you should have your old setup back with still no solution to the problem.
I suspect it might be one of the files from the config folder. But which one.
I'm totally confused now. I did bring back the kde.old from trash and tried to rename it to kde4 but was unable to do so as there was already a kde4 there. I tried overwriting the files but must have stuffed things up. Now I don't know where my original files are nor how to identify them anyway.
Have I lost my Minime now or can I retrieve it somehow?
See the edit to my last post. (The last three lines.)
You can't rename
.kde4.old (or
.kde4_old) to
.kde4 if
.kde4 already exists, and if you remove
.kde4 it will immediately be recreated. Nevertheless, in most cases a command like
rm ~/.kde4 && mv ~/kde4.old kde4will work, because the system won't have time to create a new
.kde4 between the two parts of the command. If it still doesn't work when you run it from within KDE, it will if you run it in a tty. (Just hit Ctrl+Alt+F1, log in as your normal user, run the command, and hit Ctrl+Alt+F8.)