Linux mint applications not working
 

I recently installed Linux mint & followed the guides which instruct you on the things you should do after installation. However I have discovered that some of the applications do not work like Mint update and Monitor display (I have an external monitor with my laptop). Now for a brief moment I thought I had solved the problem. The Monitor display icon appeared on the bottom right hand section of the tool bar next to the clock. When I moused over it selection could be made WITHOUT launching the app. This worked and I also got back the Fn+F10 (which wasn't working originaly) screen selection back. However when I restarted, the problem returned. No selection could be made just by mousing over it. The problem seems to be that the some of the launchers are not working because when you make any of the changes and Apply nothing happens. This is also the case with Mint update. Any suggestions?

Which release of Mint are you using, Mint 13 or Mint 17. All others are not supported, no updates.
How did you install whichever Mint you are using? Is it an actual install to a hard drive? The behavior above is expected with a LiveCD or just putting the system on a flash drive with unetbootin, universal usb installer or similar software.

Mint 17 and I installed it via live CD to hard drive.

You haven't indicate which Desktop Environment you are using. On Mint Mate, to configure the monitor, you click the Menu button in the lower left, mouse up to control center click it and under hardware there is a monitor option. If you are not using Mate, you may find it under System Settings. You need to configure your external monitor this way. Don't know what you have tried. On Mate there is an update manager. How exactly have you tried to update and what was the result? What did you try to update?

On a new install running from a terminal: sudo apt-get update, then sudo apt-get upgrade should get you all the updates.

I'm using MATE but the monitor option doesn't work when you have selected then clicked Apply. Likewise the update manager doesn't work. I can get it to work from terminal.

That's odd. Sounds like you might want to try a reinstall of Mint.

If I reinstall how do I ensure that it doesn't install on a fresh partition but installs over my current edition?

First of all I personally think this is a bit too early to consider a reinstall. E.g. I would first try and see if everything works as expected in a live system. E.g. as far as the monitor is concerned you want to find out if the distro you are using handles your hardware properly. You may also want to play around with monitor setup on the command line (see the xrandr command manpage for more details, there are also plenty examples on the web on how to use it.)
If you can do updates on the command line, but not using the gui, you could try just reinstalling the software center.

To answer your question, in case you do go for a reinstall, you can make sure the installer does what you want by choosing the manual partitioning option. At the beginning it will ask you something along the lines of "What do you want to do? Replace the current install, install Linux Mint side by side to the existing OS or do something different?". Go for "do something different". Then select the mount point / on the partition where you have your current install.

Thanks for that. I have tried xrandr options with no success. I have also tried installing the Cinnamon front to Ubuntu 14.04 (I now have Ubuntu, Mint and Windows 7 on separate partitions). Again it messed up the settings so I uninstalled it as recommended but it has still left Ubuntu messed up. Any suggestions to get back to normality? Thanks.

So the problem is with Cinnamon, have you tried using Mate?

No. Would installing Mate bring my settings back?

Whoops, in post 5 you said you're using MATE. so you know, my total knowledge of Mint is reading this article http://www.diffen.com/difference/Linux_Mint_vs_Ubuntu so I apologize for my advice.


Can you link to the "what to do after install" guides you said you followed? I'm thinking of switching to Mint and would like to take a look...

It's difficult to help you like that. You are jumping back and forth between different topics without giving detailed information about any one of them.
E.g. if you say "tried xrandr with no success" that's not helpful. Tell us exactly which commands you ran, and what the output was.
I am also confused by "tried installing the Cinnamon front to Ubuntu 14.04"... I thought you were trying to fix a problem in Linux Mint?!?
What do you mean by "messed up the settings". There is no way we can guess what settings are messed up, which means that based on the given information it's impossible to give you any meaningful advice.

Please try to move a bit slower, addressing one problem at a time, and give us more detailed information on what you tried, where it went wrong and what error messages you were getting. Especially let's not work on two different (Ubuntu / Mint) at the same time.