(SOLVED) Broken menu bar

Hi,
I just installed Zorin OS 9 ultimate yesterday and everything worked well. Last night, when I booted up my computer, the menu bar at the bottom (where the start menu is and the time and all of the programs running in the background) has blank squares and when i hover over them with my mouse, thy say "Click to restart the applet." When I click them, a loading circle appears for a split second and then it goes back to the box. I have tried restarting my computer multiple times but it doesn't fix the problem. I built my computer 2 days ago from the following parts:
- AMD 8320 cpu
- ASUS M5A97 R2.0 Motherboard
- GForce GTX 770 Graphics card
- A 120 gig SSD and a 2 tb HDD
- 16 gig's of ram
Zorin is currently the only OS running on my computer at this time. I can also launch any programs from shortcuts on the desktop. I am new to Linux and have just come from windows 7, so I apologize if I don't understand something about Linux. Thanks in advance, I am willing to give any information i may have missed. I also found other posts with a similar problem but the way they fixed it didn't work for me. i can right click the menu to bring up Preferences and About, but neither do anything when I click on them. Thanks again in advance.

Hi, Have you followed Wolfman's excellent Post-Install Guide?:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2054

Also make sure that you have your Software Settings/Updates pointing to 'Main Sever'.

With regards to shortcuts on the desktop, this is a security issue - just right-click the desktop shortcut, select 'Properties' then select 'Permissions' tab and check mark - 'Allow executing file as a program' is checked - you will then get the correct application icon showing associated with the Program.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for posting that, I must have over looked it. I will certainly go through and do everything that says and it seems to highlight my problem. To fix it, I must open the preferences by right clicking the icon and selecting preferences, but as I stated, that does nothing. Is there a command I can run from the terminal in order to open the awn settings window? Thanks again and sorry for being ignorant and not totally looking around before posting. As for the shortcuts, they weren't a problem, I just thought I should point out that the rest of the system was working, the awn toolbar was the only problem.

EDIT:
I found this site (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Av ... _Navigator) and it says that the command is awn-settings but when i run that, it says command not found?

EDIT 2:
After running awn from the terminal, I again right clicked the bar and clicked preferences and it gave me the error "Failed to execute child process "awn-settings" (No such file or directory)" Which would explain why I couldn't run it from the terminal either.

Hi,

try changing your desktop theme which is also covered in the link Swarf posted in the themes section!.

Have you done all your updates?:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2247

Make sure you set your software sources download location to "Main"!.

So firstly, I open the avant-window-navigator folder and was able to run applets from there and go a (different) start menu back. It pops up in like a speech bubble looking thing and it seems like over 50% of the programs that were initially installed just weren't present in this menu. I tried changing the theme and look from there, but nothing popped up when I clicked on it. So going through your tutorial, I ran the command to change the theme "sudo add-apt-repository ppa:noobslab/themes && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ambiance-blackout-colors" but nothing happened. It seems to have installed correctly, I received no errors, but there was no change. As for setting the download location to main, there was no option to change the download location for other software and updated, so I skipped that (but I did check all of the boxes for other software and when I tried to do so for updates, they would automatically uncheck) and changed it for Zorin Software. After reloading, it gave me an error:
Failed to fetch cdrom://Zorin 9 trusty... repeated 4 times.

So I got a little tired of not being able to use my computer (this has nothing to do with not getting immediate responses, i know that you guys must have other things to do, so that's not it at all) and ended up doing a complete re-install. If this problem persists, I will post again, but hopefully it was just a weird screw up and wont. I will follow the links you have posted to make sure everything is done correctly this time, thank you for your help.

Hi,

once you install themes, you need to change them with a tweak took, see the guide for more info!.

"Tweak Tools and single package manager: Which includes Dconf-Editor, Tweak Tool (AKA: Advanced Settings), "

For problems with the panel:

"More info about the AWN panel (Avant Window Navigator)"

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2054

If you read the update guide, it explains about the marking of the updates which may or may not show and the reason!:

"If you cannot click on the "Updates" section of "Software Sources", please don't worry about it, they are already listed in the "Other Software" window."

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2247

Take your time and read through the guides please!.

Trust me, I have read the guides, nothing worked. It was like half of the things that were initially installed just vanished and I have no clue why. Thanks for all your help and cooperation, like I said, I will post again if the problem persists.

Hi,

open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + t) and paste the following command and then restart:

Code:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -f

Let us know what happens!.

I did that and it didn't install any updates. I have now re-installed Zorin OS. thank you for your help, but the problem is now fixed. you can close this thread or do whatever it is that means that I no longer need support. I will post again if the problem comes back up.

Okay, no problem.

Just to add (sorry if already covered by Wolfman) make sure your update settings point to 'Main Server'!