Cannot open settings on 18.04

So I am VERY new to linux (only been using a couple of days) and I'm struggling.

The system settings cannot open (the icon is present and it shows from the menu in the top corner but it just spins it's wheels for a moment when initiated and gives up before opening the window). I also can't shutdown, restart, or sleep. I've found a ton of walkthroughs on how to fix this by going into the system settings, but... Most of what I'm reading to fix accessing the systems settings is going completely over my head and I keep finding myself googling in circles. To make matters worse, the issue keeps corrupting my git repository every couple days.

Is there anyone who would be able to walk my through diagnosing the cause of these issues that can dumb it down back to newbie levels?

I'm on Ubuntu 18.04 (I think Bionic Beaver, sorry I didn't do the initial set up ). I also don't know my laptop's specs aside from it being an Asus. Since I can't access the system settings at the moment I'll need to look that up via the terminal, but I'm not sure how to find the info.

I've been trying to fix this for four days :(.

Solution 1:

Try reinstalling gnome-control-center by opening a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and type

sudo apt remove --purge gnome-control-center
sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt install gnome-control-center

Solution 2:

First of all I know the post is quite old but I wanted to contribute in case someone encounters this problem again in the future.

I've also had a similar problem that troubled me for quite some time.

If non of the above solutions work try what worked for me. What was causing the issue were the default generic nouveau linux drivers for my nVidia graphics card.

I installed the nVidia graphics drivers and that solved my issue and the settings run/open smoothly ever after.

First of all before you try that check that the graphics is running the nouveau driver:

sudo lshw -c display

you shall see under configuration this:

configuration: driver=nouveau latency=0

run the following command to get the available nVidia driver for your card:

sudo ubuntu-drivers devices

now you can use

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

to automatically install the drivers or

sudo apt install nvidia-driver-version-number

to install a specific one. Now you must restart your computer in order for the changes to take place.

sudo shutdown -r now

Finally check that the nVidia driver is being used using this command again

sudo lshw -c display

I hope this helps someone and wont spend as much time trying to find a solution!

Best of luck!

Solution 3:

First of all, make sure you are not using Wayland: On the login page, click the little cog and select 'Ubuntu', not 'Ubuntu on Wayland'!

Terminal:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop
sudo systemctl restart gdm3