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I was having some trouble seeing USB devices on my XP virtual machine running in Virtual box on Ubuntu 13.10. I thought perhaps that the standard software centre 4.2 version of VirtualBox might be the problem so I downloaded VirtualBox 4.3 (deb) from the VirtualBox website. I removed my 4.2 version of VirtualBox and installed the downloaded 4.3 version using software centre. The software installation didn't seem to end normally. The icon for the software centre changed to a ? at the end of the installation. I thought it wise to reboot. When I rebooted my unity was gone. I just had a blank wallpaper desktop. I had to reinstall unity. My default terminal was also gone. I had to reinstall that. This is not so much a question as a warning to others to exercise caution when installing VirtualBox 4.3 on Ubuntu 13.10. I have done some searching on the web and I can't find others who have had this specific problem but some people mention the same problem after a "software install" but they don't say which software.

My question is this. Is VirtualBox likely to have broken other stuff that I am not aware of? Is there something specific I should do?

[Edit] I just noticed that my GVim installation also disappeared and I had to reinstall [Edit]

Thanks

Adrian

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  • I just have same issues than yours in the same context (installation of virtualbox 4.3), I think I will have to re-install all my system ... How did you proceed to reinstall unity and terminal ? – user277264 May 2 '14 at 21:36
  • You can get a terminal by typing ctrl+alt+F1. You can then use sudo apt-get install --reinstall unity. ctrl+alt+F7 or ctrl+alt+F8 takes you back to the desktop GUI. I think unity is then back. Your software centre may be gone so you then have to use the same technique to reinstall your software centre. Once you have software centre back you can reinstall all the other missing software. I don't think you need to reinstall your system. Mine seems to be working fine again after I reinstalled the stuff that went missing. – Adrian May 4 '14 at 4:24
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For me the root cause of this issue was installing VirtualBox Linux 13.04 i386 though I have Intel 64 bit setup. AfterI reinstalled Unity and then reinstalled with VirtualBox AMD64 it all worked.

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