I just upgraded to 9.04 (I think that's the number) and the upgrade failed, screwed up xfce where it wouldn't start. I got it running again, but it didn't have any panels at all. I used to have two, I've tried recreating them but I can't find a few of the things that xubuntu automatically put there.

-Battery icon (found one, but it's different than the old one)
-Update manager
-IME selector (English / Japanese)
-Sound mixer (found one, but it doesn't work or respond to my laptop's sound buttons...I have no sound now)
-The WiFi manager (it still autoconnects to my home network, but nothing else, it is a laptop so this is bad)


Ideally I'd like to just restore my old panels, since even though I'm trying to replicate them they look different. But if someone could even just tell me the names of the default programs in xubuntu and how to put them back I would be happy with that too.

Might consider a clean install.

I think it's just too hard to try to figure out every other issue that might be wrong. I doubt just these few things are the issue.

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately I think you may be right. The panels have disappeared again and I can't connect to any network anymore.

I think it's time for me to try an LFS install and/or get one of those in depth O'Reilly books about Linux. It's time to understand how to investigate problems myself and not rely on my distro's gui.