GNOME 3 search bar doesn't work

Question

My question is virtually the same as this one, which is left unanswered. By the way I disagree with the close vote as too localized because hey! I'm a future visitor and I found it useful :)

But I digress. I run Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, kernel version 3.2.0-53-generic. I got rid of Unity (apart from the login screen) and installed GNOME 3, currently on version 3.4.2.1.

I also have the Advanced Calculator and Firefox Bookmarks extensions, they are gone too. The Windows and Applications tabs still work, as does the multiple desktops thing.

Purging and reinstalling gnome-shell did not solve the problem.

To clarify: When I say the search box doesn't work, I mean I type something in it and I see no search results.

In the picture above, Firefox should have appeared, but it didn't. The same is true for the Advanced Calculator and the Firefox Bookmarks plugins which leads me to believe there's something wrong with core Gnome shell, and not the plugins themselves.

Question: Do you know what might be causing this, and, do you have any suggestion on how to fix it?

Answer 1

_{summarising the comments}

A similar issue was reported on the opensuse forums.

Basically it looks like there is corruption in one of the underlying gnome-shell configuration files to-do with the search mechanism.

To confirm this, you should create a new user account. If the problem is not persistent this means it is user specific.

To diagnose which file/files are the cause could take some considerable amount of time. Probably the easiest and most productive method would be to reset Gnome back to its defaults.

This being Ask Ubuntu - we already have a great answer for this:

• How do I reset GNOME to the defaults?

Looking for potential reasons - it could be a rogue extension. You could narrow this down by adding extensions, one-by-one. After each extension, logout-login and test your search mechanism. Continue until you find the rogue extension - then file a bug-report up-stream.