Linux help!

[windows]

Ok, i have never used linux before and i dont intend to.

my mum has a little acer netbook on linux. she called me the other day and asked me to help. she has somehow made the menu bar at the bottom dissapear. i tried guessing how to make it come back, but i just dont know becasue i have never used linux before and dont know anything about it... i dont even know what it looks like!

Can anybody tell me how i can instruct her to get it back?

Just for clarification i beleive it is a menu bar like the windows one or systray like windows has, im not entirely sure. my mum sais its in the bottom right (or used to be anyway)

Sorry if i have posted in the wrong place, i dont understand all the different sections.

[rokytnji]

In case she enabled auto hide option move her cursor to bottom of screen aand see if it pops back up. You haven't stated what distro she is running or what Windows Manager like KDE, or Gnome or XFCE either. I don't expect you to understand half of what is being said here from this statement

Ok, i have never used linux before and i dont intend to.

But we are nice folks here and this is your first post here so howdy and Welcome. We are going to need a lot more detail and on your end . You are going to have to be willing to learn a little about Linux for anyone too help you. Getting your Mom to answer what she did by posting in this thread and answering some basic questions would go a long way to figuring out why her task bar disappeared. So tell her to not be afeared. We don't bite (very hard, just kidding) and let us know what happened and to give us some better details. Good Luck and Happy Trails.

[rokytnji]

If she is runniing Gnome Desktop youcan open terminal and just type in

gnome-panel

and hit enter and her panel will come back.

[reed9]

If it's an Acer, it's almost certainly their crappy Fedora 8 spin-off, Linpus Lite. It uses a bastardized XFCE by default, I believe.

First thing to try is ALT+F2 to bring up a run dialogue, and then type xfce4-panel.

More extreme is to start deleting user configuration files. This won't harm anything in particular, it just means she'll have to redo any custom settings, like wallpaper.

Open the file manager. Go to View>Show Hidden Files. Then click .config>xfce4. Delete the folder named panel.

EDIT: You'll need to restart the desktop after removing the config files.

[rokytnji]

If running KDE you can press

Alt-F2 (global run command shortcut)

and type in

kicker

and hit enter

Edit: thanks Reed. Jumping at straws here.

[reed9]

Edit: thanks Reed. Jumping at straws here.

For some reason, the xfce panel easily goes awry. If you google, you'll find a lot of questions on missing panels and weird panel behavior with it.

[windows]

Thanks for all the help. i knew it would be pointless asking my mum what version of linux she has so i looked online at acer netbooks and im pretty sure she will have the linpus linux lite. My mum even thought she had a mac so asking her what system the computer is and technical questions is not a good idea.

The first thing i said was to hold the curser at the bottom and see if it comes back... if i was there im sure i could figure it out, but iv never even linux before so i cant even try to guess without seeing it.

The other rhing was i didnt know what you call it in linux terms. on mac its a doc, in windows its systray or start bar. i now know it is called a panel in linux

I will call my mum now and tell her to try the Alt-F2 and then type xfce4-panel. (as suggested by reed9, Thank you) however i dont want to start asking her to delete things.

I will let you know


Thanks to Everybody

[Kieren]

I don't know if it's available on Acer's but for my Asus Eee there is a certain key sequence on bootup that allows you to do a system restore that will put the laptop back to factory settings.

This is obviously a last resort and I would try all the other options first but it may be something worth looking into later

[windows]

Hi,

We tried all of the above and nothing worked

when we tried to run kicker or xfce4-panel or gnome-panel none of them worked.

we didnt delete the panel folder. Im too scared to tell her to do that. it might cause even more problems.

If it helps she said that it all started when she turned the computer on and it said the google toolbar had been installed. and now she says has a "star" icon has appeared that says it needs to be configured. I dont think it is to do with this but i dont know. i told her to try and configure this start thing. and she says it doesnt do anything double/right clickings does nothing.

it is quite annoying. she is coming back from italy on sunday and wants to bring it with her for me to fix. but then i have to bring it to italy again when i go next week. I dont want more to carry i already have too much

[reed9]

The star icon is the panel, gone wonky. I've seen it before. So xfce4-panel didn't work most likely because it's already running. (gnome-panel and kicker are not installed.)

Deleting the user config files won't harm anything. The files will be regenerated based on the default system wide settings. Just don't delete the .mozilla folder, or she'll lose her bookmarks.

Otherwise, you can try typing xfce-setting-show, to open a settings manager, select Panel, and delete the offending panel. I think it doesn't let you delete the last panel, however, so you may need to add a panel first, then delete the old one.