I'm running mageia 3 with whatever version ogf KDE the updates have dictated. Just now, on a routine closedown, a message came up saying (I think) 'No system Tray, unable to exit, Or something like. I pessed the reset button to reboot, and was rewarded on logging in again, with a defaault splash screen, with nothing on it bar the 'New Activity' tab in the top right hand corner. No Icons, no paanel.. I copied one or two icons onto the screen, to get going. On drag and drop, there was no option to move or copy, and the icons, on the desktop cannot be moved from the position to where they had been dragged. Any ideas why, anyone, and more importantly how do I get back to normality?

Hm, funky! How are you on the command line? Do you know tty1-6? Output of df -h? Have you tried a new user or your standard one with an empty ~/.kde(4)?

I'm ok on command line, df -h is something I use frequently, but tty1-6 is something new. I've tried deleting ~/.kde4, as a solution, since it s replaced instantly with what appear to be a defaault set of values. I must admit, this is the first time ever, that I've come across this problem. I'm afraid that at the time I didn't take much notice. Apart from noting that the error message "No System Tray" seemed odd, since it was there and working. At least if what it was referring to was the panel at the bottom of the screen.

tty1-6 - just press CTRL+ALT+F2 for tty2 for example, log in and do your magic from there.

Ah, I see your point with regard to Ctrl Alt F2. Go to single user state and apply corrective action. However, late last night , I seem to have got back to near normal. I tried deleting ~/.kde4, with no result. But descending into .kde4 and deleting the contents piecemeal, suddenly my original (nearly) came back. Including all the missing icons. Strange. I'd have thought them gone for good.. So I've been applying the rest of the unresolved issues, and I'm now left with only one. My mail client Claws mail no longer runs. Starting it in a console gives the error "Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module". Which is a bit odd, since the relevant packages appear to be loaded. For the mo' I've moved to Sylpheed the original Claws Mail, until I can sort out why.

Superb! Glad to hear you're on the road to recovery

As for the remaining problem, a quick google gave plenty of hits including solved issues in a number of forums - I reckon you'll sort that one out before long, too!

I am still puzzled as to why this occurred. What, if anything, did you do beforehand that might have caused this?