start menu missing after reboot

[jonezy187]

I have recently installed Mint 14 and on initial boot the start menu is there. i installed all the programs i needed and then rebooted. now the start menu along the bottom is missing. all i can see is my desktop items. I don't know what has gone wrong? can someone help please?

[CupOfCoffee]

Hmm, are you able to press the Start button on your PC (or the Menu key for Mac) and have it appear? I wish I had a picture of your desktop so I could try and figure out what could be going on. The Panel could just be set to Auto-Hide.

I'll help you in any way that I can!

-CupOfCoffee

[jonezy187]

I can run terminal and enter mintmenu to show the menu button, but it opens as a window rather than the bar along the botton. so the computer is fully functioning but just the menu and bar along the bottom don't show up. I'm not on the Linux machine at the moment but i can post a screenshot later on. I've read elsewhere that it could be something to do with Nautilus or Nemo but i'm still a beginner with Linux so don't really understand what they are?

[CupOfCoffee]

Natilus, Nemo = File Managers Hmm, I'm not sure at the moment what the problem still is, I'm really having no problems with my desktop...

I probably can't answer very many questions in this forum...

[CupOfCoffee]

Oh, I found a solution! I found it from Xenopeek on viewtopic.php?f=47&t=114906.

Right-click on an empty spot on the panel, choose "Add to Panel" from the menu that popped up. Add the "mintMenu" and you should have the menu back.

Hope this helps!

Note: Since this quote was for a previous version of Mint (Mint 13, Maya I think), for Cinnamon you would right-click on an empty space in the panel, select "Add applets to the panel", and find the option called "Cinnamon Menu" and select it!

[Guilden_NL]

That doesn't work because there is no menu bar at the bottom, so no empty space.

Only Wallpaper, and any desktop short cuts show. Everything on the bottom is gone in Cinnamon.

I am checking many posts and it appears to be a bug in Cinnamon, but I don't see the devs recognizing it, nor no work on it.

[urrvile]

I'm having the same problem in Mint 13 MATE: I rebooted last night and the whole bottom panel disappeared, leaving me unable to access anything except by key commands. Also, the mouse can go beyond the borders of the screen and get lost. Hours looking have not given me any ideas on what to do. Please advise!

[Geneva]

And, I'm having the same problem in 32bit Linux Mint 13 Cinamon. After an update on the 12th there is no panel along the bottom of the screen
All desktop icons are present and I can invoke apps from the terminal...
... so I backed up all my data and reloaded Mint 13 (using the nomodeset option, otherwise it locks on a black screen) this worked Fine, so I udated the Nvidia driver and Codecs.. No problem so far
then I activated the update manager and after the full update with config files replaced, the panel is again missing
I shall try this again without replacing configs, just to eliminate (or confirm) their complicity,
Of Note; is that the same update has given no problems on my old Asus F3ja Laptop with ATI 1600 graphics, it looks like it may be related to my hardware possibly the graphics card
so still looking for a solution .. if I find something I'll post it

[Geneva]

Ok having investigated this it appears that the bad boy is: nvidia-common
On my system with GT 240 graphics card the update to this is what causes the panel to dissapear
It may be the same with other systems using the nvidia GT 2xx series, not having any others cards of that series I cannot compare. however I already knew there was a problem with my card as nouveau doesn't seem to recognise it on initial load of live disc or install (which is why 'nomodeset' has to be used). Anyone out there in Mint development land listening???
So what I did to fix this was; do a clean Mint 13 OS install (no problem with data loss as I have /home in a separate partition)
update the nvidia graphics driver, from the Hardware popup
then install updates packages as follows
from the first screen the update manager opens, the Level 1 mintupdate (currently 4.3.9)
Then from the next screen of updates, All Level 1 and 2 updates
and in Level 3 everything Except 'nvidia-common', its about #39 down the list of Level 3 update packages (there were 509 of them)
Answer 'yes' to replacing the config files, as this is a clean install and they have nothing to do with the panel vanishing.
Then reboot and the panel should still be there... This is not really a fix more a work-around which worked for me and my hardware
... Note however, there will be still an outstanding nvidia-common update package in the update manager (I think one has to live with it, perhaps it'll get fixed, I don't think it's Mints fault though)
Hope this helps someone else ... if so put a post up and let us know what you did (also, if you did something else)