How do I get my panel back

[Grandpa]

I don't know what happened but my desktop is totally messed up.  Lets start at the beginning.  Everything was just like I wanted.  I had it that way for some time.  One night I shut the computer down.  Now remember I had not changed anything.  The next morning I turned the computer on and the "clock and date" in the lower right system panel was blinking and jumping around real fast.  I couldn't stop it.  I shut the computer down by holding in the computer start button.  I did it that way hoping that it would not save any settings that were causing the clock and date to act that way.  Turned the computer back on again and the same thing happened.  So now I tried to fix it.  Boy what a mistake that was.  I now have no icons in the panel, nothing.  Even the "PC" icon that shows the menu of all the program including a way to shut down is gone.  I am just about ready to reinstall everything but "home".  I will if there is not a easy fix.  Thanks for any replies.

[kjpetrie]

If the "cashew" is not visible at the far right of the panel, right-click the panel and select "unlock widgets".

Then click the cashew and a large area will open up around the panel. Along the top you will see a menu item called "add widgets". When you click that you will be offered widgets to select, including all the normal panel parts and many more. Select the ones you want and arrange them on the panel by dragging. You might have to click the red box with the cross in before you can drag; I'm not sure. When you are satisfied with the result right-click the panel again and select "lock widgets".

[muungwana]

if you want to set everything to default values to start afresh, go to .kde folder(its a hidden folder in your home directory and then to share -> config and rename all files "plasma-desktop-appletsrc" text file, log out, log back in and things should be set to default.

[Grandpa]

muungwana do you mean to select all files in the config folder and then rename them "plasma-desktop-appleetsrc?  I have 3 files named "plasma-desktop-(something).  One of them is named Plasma-desktop-appletsrc.

In the config folder there is over a hundred files and 2 folders.

[muungwana]

i meant rename all text files that start with "Plasma-desktop" .

I think the specific one that deal with applet placement on the desktop is "Plasma-desktop-appletsrc". Renaming this one and logging out and back in should force kde to recreate it with default values.

[belantos]

Something like this happened to me also. I need to find out of this is KDE4 bug or PCLinuxOS implementation bug.

In my case I turned off all desktop effects last night because as I was working the computer fan was going crazy even though I was just going through menu points in gimp. This morning when I logged in the lowest bit of the panel appeared on the top of the screen. When I resized the panel in the hope that it will fix it, the clock characters became big and the quicklaunch icons became large, and the whole thing was just a mess. Rename all the files? Redo the config? What a waste of time!!! What guarantees that this will not happen again? I think KDE4 is still not mature and not stable enough. Plasma crashes very often.

[muungwana]

there are no guarantees, backup ".kde/share/config" folder when you have everything set up the way you want and restore when/if it happen again.

kde3 kicker suffered from the same kind of issues too. This is not a kde4 specific issue.

[belantos]

This was caused by quicklunch. The panel cannot handle it... I removed it and added it back, and it fixed it.

[Grandpa]

OK I have the panel back.  The system tray is in the lower left corner.  That is where I want it.  In the lower right corner is the icon with the letters "PC" in it.  That is OK.  The background didn't go to default.  I would like to have the default background.  In the upper right corner there is window folder called "Desktop Folder".  It is open and shows the icons " Home, Firewall, Network Center, and Trash".  They were on the Desktop before.  But not in a window.  When I click in the "PC" icon I don't get the default menu.  I get a window with a panel at the bottom.  In the panel are icons called "Favorites, Application, Computer, Recently Used, and Leave".  What I really want is the way everything was when I first saw it after the install.  

Hey I am getting there.  I think!!

[Texstar]

Quick way to restore the panel to default settings.

Open a konsole terminal
su to root
type cp /etc/skel/.kde4/share/config/plasma* /home/yourname/.kde4/share/config
type chown yourname:yourname /home/yourname/.kde4/share/config/*
type exit
type exit
logout and back in again.

[Grandpa]

Thanks Tex!!  But by playing around I have everything back the way I want it.  In the process I may have learned a few things.  Now it I don't forget what I learned, all will not be lost.  I need to find a way to move the program icons to the center.  They are on the left side next to the system tray.