Lost desktop icons and panel (driver problem?)

[biggocharley]

I'm running Mint 10 and I recently updated my nvidia driver to the 96.43.19 version.
This is my card --Graphics: Card nvidia NV18 [GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x] X.Org 1.9.0 Res: 1280x1024@0.0hz
GLX Renderer N/A GLX Version N/A Direct Rendering N/A.

When I rebooted I found that my desktop icons and bottom panel had disappeared.
I was able to get my icons back by running nautilus -q but I still am not able to get my bottom panel-taskbar back.
Any idea what would have caused this? Any help would be appreciated.

[biggocharley]

After this post I rebooted to the recovery mode and ran dpkg (to fix broken packages). After a reboot the icons and the bottom panel "popped" back up and all seemed to be ok. However after another reboot --guess what??_ back to the same problem --no icons and no panel.
Help, please, if you are able.
thanks.

[luna paradox]

pkill gnome-panel
should get all back working. I have had this problem since ubuntu 9.10 and all the respective mint version. Don't know if it's the nvidia driver or not. I have mx400/400 card. but when this happens i just run that command and all goes back right with the world.

[biggocharley]

pkill gnome-panel
should get all back working. I have had this problem since ubuntu 9.10 and all the respective mint version. Don't know if it's the nvidia driver or not. I have mx400/400 card. but when this happens i just run that command and all goes back right with the world.

That did the trick. I had just about given up. I have had this problem on ubuntu lucid and mint debian. In fact my mint debian is now "dead" all I can get is a black screen (after my meddling). I'll play around some more with it now that I'm encouraged by your answer.
I can't thank you enough for your help.

[luna paradox]

Glad it helped