Updated things like usual and... everything broke.

[Cetega]

Hello, hopefully I'm in the right section with this.

I went into Synaptic today to update things as I do periodically. Reloaded the list and applied all updates as usual. However, when the updates finished, I noticed my taskbar color had changed, and all the old default icons (Firewall Setup, Home, Localization Manager, both Get OpenOffice and LibreOffice Manager, etc.) were back on my desktop, when I deleted those ages ago. I decided to restart to see if my color scheme settings would reload properly.

Not so much. After the restart, everything has reverted to it's default state. All my desktop, taskbar, launcher menu, and other customizations are gone, and I'm now getting several error messages about things crashing on startup. (KNotify, KCMInit, KDE Daemon) All of my programs and files seem to still be here, but all the OS settings have reverted to defaults.

Any idea what happened, and if there is any easy way to fix this? It will be a hassle enough to try to go through and re-setup everything the way I had it, but I wouldn't know where to begin with all the errors I'm now getting.

Thanks in advance.

[TerryN]

Any idea what happened, and if there is any easy way to fix this?

Yes ... search the forum 

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,106393.0.html
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,106387.0.html
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,106364.msg908596.html#msg908596

and more 

Terry

[Cetega]

Thank you for your help! Sorry I didn't search a little better than I did, I was somewhat spazzy about losing things at the time, haha. Going to uninstall that package to try to avoid this issue in the future.

I renamed the kde4 backup folder and my settings seem to have returned for the most part. The icons are still on the desktop, but those can be deleted again easily enough. However, I'm still getting all those program crashes (KNotify, KCMInit, KDE Daemon) on startup and shutdown. I didn't see any mention of that problem in the topics you linked to. Did I miss something, or is this possibly an unrelated problem coincidentally showing up at the same time?

[JohnW_57]

I'm still getting all those program crashes (KNotify, KCMInit, KDE Daemon) on startup and shutdown. I didn't see any mention of that problem in the topics you linked to. Did I miss something, or is this possibly an unrelated problem coincidentally showing up at the same time?

Nvidia video card with the current drivers installed?

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,106297.0.html

Maybe this could be the issue and solves with removing the prelink package.

JohnW

[luikki]

The icons are still on the desktop, but those can be deleted again easily enough.

no need to delete. unlock widgets>desktop settings and change foder view to>desktop.

looks like you missed this:
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,106364.msg908594.html#msg908594

[Cetega]

Thanks for the help everyone! I actually just got done updating my kernel and removing prelink after stumbling across that topic you linked to in a search. (search box is my friend, evidently =|) After the last reboot, the errors seem to have all gone away. This system does have nVidia graphics, so I suppose that explains why my older system with ATI graphics updated fine when I left out the kde4-config package. That older system is still on a 2.6 kernel, but I figure as long as it continues to work fine, no point in trying to break anything else.

As for the desktop icons, I usually prefer to keep it showing the desktop folder, I just don't like any permanent icons there. I usually use the desktop as a place to save things temporarily until I either move them somewhere to keep or delete them. I've been that way for years, on both Linux and Windows machines, I just can't stand to have any permanent icons on my desktop, haha.

Thanks again to all who helped, and my apologies for not using the search a little more extensively before flailing in a panic, haha.