Desktop trashed after update.. please help

[Dobly]

I have been running Mint 14 64bit with the cinnamon desktop for about a month now after years of being a Windows user. So far I have enjoyed the minty freshness of Mint (I'm sure you know what I mean).

Anyway, last night I ran the Update Manager and told it to install whatever it thought it needed. Nothing like keeping your system up to date right?

Since then the desktop has turned to rubbish. When I first boot in, there is no task bar. Next, if I press the Windows key (this key needs a better name) the menu opens but it is just text with no background color. Finally, nothing works. If can get my mouse pointer to Firefox i can get it to open. If I try to move the window, it just turns white all over and becomes unresponsive. From then on, nothing works. I can't even get to the shut down button.

I'm hoping to find a solution to this before my download of Fedora 18 finishes, if you get my drift. First however I need to see if I can get in to this busted piece of junk and back up my stuff..

I'm hoping there is a solution to this. I have invested hours / days into setting this up they way I like and have learned along the way. but this issue is beyond my skill set.

What can I do???

[Dobly]

Well, in the 90 minutes since I posted the message above, I booted into the live Mint CD, mounted my hard drives, and with a bit of chmod, was able to copy all my stuff from what was my home folder on sda1 to a folder on sdb1.

Right now I am installing Fedora 18 where once Mint stood.

[jungle_boy]

OK, bye...

[chiefjim]

You may have reacted too quickly. I've had similar screens but for different reasons. Should you again be using Mint and experience the problem try this.

Cntrl_Alt_Del to log out. Pick your desired session clicking the middle box. Log back in.

Good chance that will return you to the desktop you were looking for along with a prompt asking if you wish to make this the default.

[jungle_boy]

At this time, he is running Fedora...

[Dobly]

Well, I gave Mint 14 a month or so of my time.. Here are my observations.

1. When I first installed it, I could plug in my Canon 7D, gThumbs would open and I could get images off it. Just like nature intended. One day a couple of weeks ago, this stopped working. Some USB error 'could not mount device' or some such nonsence. I have no idea why.

2. Thunderbird would open and work just fine, but if I closed it I could not open it a 2nd time as it was 'already running'. Very annoying.

3. Despite the fact that I got the latest ATI Catalyst drivers installed for my ATI 6800 card, got rid of the stupid ATI test watermark and had the Catalyst control panel working etc, no game would run. All resulted in a black screen. These included but not limited to...

- Team Fortress 2 (native) that I downloaded from Steam.
- Diablo 3 - with the help of Wine and PlayOnLinux
- Everquest 2 - Running in Windows 7 in a Virtual Box VM with the 'experimental' Direct X drivers.
- Trine 2 (native) paid for and downloaded from Steam

Goodness me, Trine 2 is sideways scroller. My C64 could run a sideways scroller!!

4. Videos would not run in the Steam client despite all of my efforts following the installation instructions.

5. This recent so called 'update' utterly trashed the desktop. Unforgivable.

I'm not suggesting that these issues are Mint related specifically. I'm just detailing my experience in the last month or so.

I've not given up on Mint. I gave it shot and it went down hill from the moment I installed it.

I have Fedora 18 installed now and will give that a go. If it can play games via Steam and otherwise, get images off my camera and run After Shot Pro I'll keep it.

If that fails I'll try Ubuntu 12.10. After that I'll make a decision. I will NOT go back to Windows7.

For what it's worth. I like the Mint desktop, icons and such, better than Fedora's default offering. But ultimately, who care what your desktop looks like?