I accidentally deleted the default, upper, panel and I can't see how to get it back! I've tried recreating it but I cannot see how to populate it with certain items, specifically the wireless networking control applet. So how do I get back the panel i deleted?

What distro? (Actually, what Desktop?---eg Gnome or KDE)

In principle, you could try to recover the file for that panel, but I doubt if it's worth the trouble. The easy way is to re-install your DE or the whole OS (See first question---it may be time for an upgrade regardless.)

right click on the panel and click on the add applet menu. This will bring up your items to populate your menu with. I'm assuming you are using gnome... since this is in the ubuntu thread.... but you never know. I am not using gnome anymore, so I can't remember the names of what you are wanting to add. Look for menu something or something menu. There are several applets. You can also create a new user or log into another users account and right click on the applets running on that panel and see what the names of each applet are. This will save you some guess work

Sorry to have wasted your time, should have googled the question first.

Basically there are three lines of code to restore the default panel or alternatively all I needed was to install the "Notifications" applet on my new panel.

Thank you for the replies.

For information this is with the Gnome desktop running on ubuntu 9.1.