desktop has become a grey void in Xubuntu 13.10

I upgraded from xubuntu 13.04 to 13.10. Everything seemed fine. Then I turned the computer off... rebooted and signed in and the desktop wallpaper and icons and files on the desktop are gone. Replaced by a grey void. the top and bottom panels are still present and I can run programs from the menu or the launcher along the bottom of the screen.

If I go into settings and try to change my wallpaper it shows the correct image selected yet the desktop stays grey. I change the ocons that are to be listed on the desktop and it stays empty grey.

Please someone help me.

Solution 1:

I've had the very similar problem several times. What seems to help in most cases is the deletion of the sessions cache while you are not Xfce-logged-in:

1. If you are logged in, then log out. (ensure that you are not logged in at Xfce.)

2. At the login screen press the combination Ctrl+Alt+F1 to reach a terminal based login.

3. Login with your normal credentials.

4. Delete the cached sessions directory:

   rm -rf ~/.cache/sessions/
   

5. Press Ctrl+D to logout.

6. Press Ctrl+Alt+F7 to get back to you normal GUI login screen. (if that does not work, try F6 or F8 instead of F7.)

That should solve the problem.

If you instead delete the directory while being logged in at Xfce, sometimes Xfce seems to reinstall a corrupted session cache when logging out, even if the corresponding checkbox is unchecked.

Another often suggested solution involves the deletion of ~/.config/xfce4, but that means loss of some data. See https://mynixworld.info/2015/10/20/xfce-desktop-grey/ for restoring.