No desktop icons on ubuntu 11.04 install
 

I have just installed ubuntu 11.04 (upgrade from older version) on my Asus eee pc 1000. When the machine starts up, I get an empty desktop screen, with no buttons or icons to click on.
If I type Ctrl-Alt-T I get a terminal and can start firefox and look at directories, but my expertise ends there.
I suspect a screen resolution problem, but would appreciate any help / hints.
Thanks

If you can get Terminal why not try creating another user and see if everything loads there?

Did you succeed? I have opened the terminat and created another user and it works.

thank you both for your idea.
I created a new user, tried 'sudo login david1' so that the terminal had 'david1' as the user, what i need to do now is make it so that when booting up, the system automatically logs in 'david1' or I get a list of users to choose from. Any ideas?
Thanks again.

A bit later.....
pressed the power button and hibernated, so managed to login as the new user. I still got a nice space picture desktop, but apart from that it's completely naked, no menu bars, no icons, nothing....

and even later....
using the terminal i started up libreoffice. Created a text document and saved it to my desktop. The document is nowhere to be seen on the desktop. So does this mean that the nice space picture I'm getting isn't the desktop?

and after a lot of tea....
I saw a reference on the internet (using my Mac) that the user interface on Ubuntu 11.04 netbook edition used something called unity. I opened up a terminal and typed 'unity' and all of a sudden I had a desktop, I also had a terminal that was producing all sorts of error messages. When I shut down the terminal, Unity shut down as well. Maybe I need to put some file links in somewhere. This eeePc has two partitions on the ssd, one of 8Gb and another of about 25Gb, I think a lot of stuff has ended up on the wrong partition?

sitka
Let's start all over.
When your machine boots it has no login screen?
Post output of dmesg or check logs.
Is the blank screen just a desktop background?
Is your boot set for verbose so that you can see the messages during boot?
I've had this happen before, but it complained about something in /run.
If you have that message, the command I had to use was
rm -rf /run

When your machine boots it has no login screen?
-- it does now I enabled it, and got the system to boot into Ubuntu classic
Post output of dmesg or check logs.
-- attached
Is the blank screen just a desktop background?
-- yes it was, but now I have the ubuntu classic desktop
Is your boot set for verbose so that you can see the messages during boot?
-- not set for verbose
I've had this happen before, but it complained about something in /run.

-- your interest and help appreciated Eddy1

composite sync not supported is the thing that catches my attention some of the posts suggest graphics some suggest wireless.

But right now you have your desktop
gconf editor in debian it's "configuration Editor" it may be under Applications>>SystemTools
go to apps>>nautilus>>desktop and place a check in the icons you want enabled.