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I am running Ubuntu 11.10 using gnome 3 shell. I have set my pc to automatically log into gnome shell so I do not see the login screen. Today I installed some updates and now the gnome panel is gone. When my pc logs in I ONLY see the background. There are no menus, nothing! Even the exit, minimize and maximise buttons in the top tight corner of the windows are gone. Also, alt+f2 also does not work. Any ideas how to fix this?

I have a Nvidia Geforce 7900GTO with the Nvidia proprietary drivers installed. I have also used the recovery mode and removed some packages that apparently were broken. Still does not work.

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  • can you open a terminal with ctrl+alt+t ? if yes, type gnome-shell --replace
    – martin
    Dec 2, 2011 at 19:08
  • No, nothing happens when I press ctr+alt+t
    – Hannes
    Dec 2, 2011 at 20:26
  • log out, and choose gnome classic (or ubuntu, doesn't really matter), then run gnome-tweak-tool and disable all extensions. Then, log out again, and you should be able to run gnome-shell again.
    – martin
    Dec 2, 2011 at 20:40
  • I cannot log out because I cannot open the terminal nor can I see the panel with the logout option. Thats exactly the problem I have. If only I could log out but I see only the wallpaper
    – Hannes
    Dec 2, 2011 at 21:02
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    open a virtual console (ctrl+alt+f1).cd .local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/ and delete the newly installed extensions. (rm -rf "name of extension directory"). then restart lightdm: sudo stop lightdm and sudo start lightdm
    – martin
    Dec 2, 2011 at 21:13

3 Answers 3

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I had the same issue on a Lenovo W530 Laptop and fixed the issue using the following command

sudo apt-get remove nvidia-current.

But this can only be a temporary solution.

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I think it's because the updates included cairo-dock to be installed.

If your system (graphic card) opengGL didn't run properly, it might crash gnome shell.

Try to uninstalled it.

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    I use ubuntu in virtual box. Uninstalled cairo-dock fixed the problem.
    – Suwandi Halim
    Dec 13, 2012 at 15:44
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I had this problem as well, with Unity. (or any other desktop)

you can access a terminal after login by pressing ctrl+alt+F1 -- on a macbook pro keyboard you have to hold down fn for the F keys to work.

I've removed the nvidia drivers, settings and unity -- after which I was dropped into gnome shell, which worked fine, I assume if I re-install Unity it will be fine as well? I'm not sure as to the cause of this, except that the last thing I did was install the latest (possibly experimental) Nvidia drivers.

I ran these commands:

sudo apt-get remove nvidia-current
sudo apt-get remove nvidia-settings

I also removed (disabled) the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and removed the ~.Xauthority file.

I can't tell which combination or specific item here was the right thing to do, maybe I overkilled it, if anyone more knowledgeable would like to chime in?

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