I have been a longtime user of KDE, having been a CDE user (HPUX 10.x) at work in the '90s, KDE's similar design made it a familiar environment, and I have enjoyed it through the years. Recently I swapped out my router and ran into some problems with the install. Sadly, this incapacitated all of my KDE computers: they were very slow to boot and log in; parts of the panel graphics were scrambled (I understand internet dependent widgets not working, but why does the desktop pager get scrambled?); the Kickoff app launcher didn't work; applications that I could launch from icons on the panel took much longer than usual to start. In short, the system was destabilized and useless as a tool to investigate my network issues.

So, does KDE not work in an offline mode any more? I had to turn to a windows laptop to get a system that worked. Sad.

could you clarify a couple of things:
- "problems with the install" was of the router ? or an install/update of the distro and/or KDE?
- all you computers act this way? how many?

Can you create and login as a new user on one of the machines and does this clean user see the issues described?

Your systems should work fine in offline mode, could it be you have processes other than network aware widgets that are trying to access resources no longer available?

Running ksysguard does anything look excessive in the i/o, cpu or memory colums?

I have used my system many times in situations where the network was either slow (3G), filtered (captive portal) or simply unavailable and have never had the sort of problem you describe.

Did you have CIFS/NFS/other network shares specified in /etc/fstab?

@google01103:

• Install problem appeared to be with the router, but was actually due to my ISP switching to a MAC address registration scheme that did not release/update my change of router, and which also dumped my web server
• Two computers: desktop and web server.
• As this has been resolved with my ISP, I no longer have the trouble, but I do wonder why my two computers were rendered effectively unusable. Creating new accounts at this point is moot.
• The only services/widgets that I have running that might have caused this are: muon updater (both computers), gmail-plasmoid (desktop only), Luna (desktop only), internet time sync (both computers). I would be surprised if any of these had such a debilitating effect on my computers.
• Again, running ksysguard at this point is moot.

@bcooksley:
No, ext3 and swap only.

The slow bootup time could not have been caused in any way by KDE - that was likely the internet time syncing (aka. NTP).

As for the slow responsiveness of Plasma Desktop - this could very well have been caused by the Gmail, Luna or Muon applets, depending on how they interact with the network. Given that both machines are affected, I suspect Muon may very well have been at fault (although indirectly) - is it an actual Plasma applet or a seperate application? (If it is a seperate application then it cannot be the cause).