Can't open terminal and other apps! Problems after automatic update and reboot
 

Hi, I did an automatic update and rebooted this morning and I now have a bit of a nightmare situation where I can't open the majority of applications, including the terminal. When I rebooted, my desktop loaded as normal, but then when I try to open the terminal (from Applications -> Accessories or from my quick launch panel), nothing happens other than the quick launch panel disappears for a second then reappears. This is the case for most other apps, but not for Chrome (obviously).

Does anyone know of this issue or how I could go about fixing it? Really grateful for any help as stuck at work and can't actually do anything until I get this fixed!

EDIT: Used Alt+F2 to open the terminal, ran safe upgrade and then rebooted, but still having the same issue. As Ubuntu was booting, there was a "Broken pipe" message, which didn't stop the boot process but is still a bit worrying. I've run a file system check but this hasn't resolved the problem either.

Clicking it shouldn't be very different than starting it manually, so you can check Main Menu in Preferences, to see if the launcher properties are correct, although I can't imagine it not being correct...

(The command for the Terminal should be gnome-terminal offcourse)