Hello, I seem to have a rather annoying problem. Any changes I try to make to my account (non-root) such as desktop background, theme icons etc. are automatically removed when I log back in and it won't even let me set a desktop background anymore.

I think I"ve managed to lock myself out of my own account. I can log in, I just can't save anything. I tried changing the permissions in root, however it won't let me save the changes to all the files in my account, only one folder at a time.

This happened when I screwed stuff up while creating a new non-root account and set the same home directory as the account I normally use.

If anyone has any suggestions as how to set my account back to normal please let me know! I need it to be working again asap.

P.S. ever notice how computers only have problems the week before term papers are due? (the first time I had to re-format the hard drive...)

Maybe if you tell us what desktop or what distro you're using it would be easier for somebody to help. I don't really know what to tell you. What happens when you log in as the other account? Sometimes these really annoying things have really dumb, easy solutions. If the new account is causing it (I've had weird problems like this in Windows before), get rid of it. Or, if the new one is working fine, get rid of your old one.

P.S. Dude, I had a fatal hard drive crash the day I printed my 100-page thesis (right after the printing, that is). Scary...

Sorry for being so brief.

I use Debian, based off of a Knoppix CD. It normally works, pretty well, however I really really really need to stop messing with stuff I don't understand.

Alright, here are some symptoms of this, and possible reasons, this is happening. Just no idea how to change it.

Symptoms
~ When I boot back in, everything is just as it was when I first installed Knoppix. None of my preferences are saved. These include
Icons.
IceWM Themes. Actually, IceWM is completely gone. When I right click
on the titlebar, it doesn't give me the configure dialog anymore.
The Dock The dock is basically, exactly as it was in the Knoppix CD.
I normally, have it off to one side, hidden because I use krollbar.

~Things that are the Same
Positions of icons.
All my files are still in place. Thank God. (It's time for a little
backing up...

What I think might be wrong with it.
I think I may have screwed up the permissions somewhere while changing
the directory to knoppix, instead of creating a new one when I created
a new account.
Also, it's not saving what files, I have open and opening those when I
restart KDE. I think this might be a major contributor.

I deleted the other account as it was having DCOP server problems. But I can still login normally as root. I haven't tried messing around with root to see if it saves stuff there. I hope that helps someone figure it out!

I hope that helped some. Thanks

shodekiagari