Start Menu Corrupted in mate 17.3

[susan]

I'm not sure how this happened... perhaps when the OS failed to initialize, which happens from time to time and I have to restart the computer. I do know how to do a 'repair' install leaving Home unformatted but I'm hoping there might be an easier fix. It's now only displaying the categories but not the sub-menus of the programs. When the system starts up I get the following message window:

Couldn't initialize plugin applications : Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintMenu/mintMenu.py", line 320, in PopulatePlugins
MyPlugin.do_plugin()

File "/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintMenu/plugins/applications.py", line 1326, in do_plugin
self.Todos()

File "/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintMenu/plugins/applications.py", line 584, in Todos
self.buildButtonList()

File "/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintMenu/plugins/applications.py", line 614, in buildButtonList
self.updateBoxes(False)

File "/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintMenu/plugins/applications.py", line 1733, in updateBoxes
item["button"] = MenuApplicationLauncher( item["entry"].get_desktop_file_path(), self.iconSize, item["category"], self.showapplicationcomments, highlight=(True and menu_has_changed) )

File "/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintMenu/plugins/easybuttons.py", line 482, in __init__
ApplicationLauncher.__init__( self, desktopFile, iconSize )

File "/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintMenu/plugins/easybuttons.py", line 254, in __init__
desktopItem = xdg.DesktopEntry.DesktopEntry( desktopFile )

File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/xdg/DesktopEntry.py", line 33, in __init__
self.parse(filename)

File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/xdg/DesktopEntry.py", line 42, in parse
IniFile.parse(self, file, ["Desktop Entry", "KDE Desktop Entry"])

File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/xdg/IniFile.py", lin