after update from kde 4.4.2 (some packages were still KDE 4.3) to debian's 4.4.4 KDE become unusable.

knetworkmanager still starts, but it doesn't see any systray, so shows its message in a lonely window.

i press alt+f2, type dolphin, press enter but nothing happens.

can you help me to debug this?

problem is [temporarily] solved by removing kde completely and installing KDE 4.4.3 from testing

Is it reproducible under a new user? Also, are you able to start Konsole? ( adding a file into $KDEHOME/Autostart should be sufficient if KRunner won't work )

I've got the same problem - A complete installation from scatch didn't solve it - At first i thought it was my nvidia card but my netbook is trashed too A new profile didn't work likewise

Currently i'm using testing too...

I suffered from this yesterday, too. Today, (14th) apt-get update and apt-get upgrade installed a few more KDE components so I logged into KDE again. White screen.

So, I created a test user and logged into that. Everything worked!

I copied the contents of $HOME/.kde to another directory, then performed an;

rm -rf $HOME/.kde

and logged in again. All was well. Well, I had to redo a few settings of course, but at least I wasn't restricted to running everything on one desktop.

As yet, I've not determined what was the cause of the problem. TBH, I probably never will as I've already "solved" the problem.

I've updated the libkdecore5 etc... from unstable
It works again...

does anyone know the reason for this little adventure?

Possibly caused by a binary compatibility issue, old incompatible configuration file, or stale cache.

I'm having this issue on Debian wheezy, kdebase 4.6.5

I moved .kde and .kderc to a backup location (before, the screen froze on the loading animation, but I could still move the mouse pointer around).

I tried a KDE/Openbox session and the same thing happened, so I don't think it's a compositing issue. Also, Openbox responded normally to my keybindings, and I could launch apps on top of the white screen, but clicking around didn't do anything.