Hello, I'm using Xandros 4.2 Home Edition Premium in dual boot with WinXP.

A faulty installation at Xandros Networks has cause the print service to stop, Adobe Acrobat Reader fails to launch, Open Office is completely gone from the apps menu and there are probably other apps gone haywire.

Xandros tech support rep told me that I should reinstall from scratch. I am wondering since I have Konserve backups of etc, home, and root directories from before these errors occurred, if I can just paste healthy files into the places where they are broken. But I don't know where to begin.

I'm not too confident right now about reinstalling xandros from scratch. I WAS confident at Xandros Networks. Now, I have a broken package.

I had to start from scratch a few years ago because of a broken package. I attempted a restore of etc, home and root from Konserve, but the desktop became a mess, so I had to start again completely from scratch. I figure that I don't know exactly what I'm doing, thus I also have Windows which is made for people with slightly lower IQ.

I want to be able to use those healthy backups, but I don't know how w/o making a mess.

I would deeply appreciate some guidance. Thanks in advance.

The official line here is to listen to the Tech Support, but personally I'm always suspicious of being told to do a clean rebuild; it is hard to know whether or not the tech support are reading a script, or whether or not they have any experience in the matter.

That being said, there may be something in starting again; I understand Xandros use their own package manager so I can't give you an exact location, but if you can get a list of installed packages, couple that with your own files, and perhaps reinstall with this list to help you get all your packages back.

It all depends on the level of the problem. That being said, lets see if we can fix the problems instead.

http://docs.kde.org/stable/en/kdebas.../kde-menu.html has some good points on regenerating the menus in KDE, and if I remember correctly Xandros uses KDE.

Acrobat reader shouldn't be your choice at all, there are many, many good philosophical reasons, and many others; you might try ocular, which I should hope is already on there; if not install it, it is the KDE default.

What else; the printer. Can you give more information on how the printer services work? An /etc/init.d script perhaps?

Thinking about it, though, all these are probably distro specific, where one thing breaks and takes the rest down. In which case a rebuild may be the best bet.

If I may ask, are you tied into Xandros in anyway? Would you consider swapping for a distro that makes all this easier? The reason I ask is that, as with Acrobat Reader, there are many, many philosophical and practical reasons to sack Xandros off and stick a big middle finger up to
<... cut off before I get evangelical and start annoying people>

Please excuse my belated reply. Thanks for your response.

The Xandros tech support rep has stopped answering me although I've paid in advance to resolve an incident.

I've had a look at those menus. I'm not sure where to begin except to fix wherever I'm experiencing trouble. For example, I tried Gimp today which said it couldn't find a certain directory with a needed module within /usr/lib/gtk-2.0; it wanted a directory name 2.4.0. It had a directory named 2.10.0. I just renamed it to 2.4.0 and Gimp works again.

You see, if I just get an idea on where to look and how to fix something when a problem occurs, then I do a jury rig and it works. The same happened with my clock recently when the regions dir was missing and in mozilla when user.js was missing; I put it back and it works again.

Unfortunately, I tried that at Xandros Networks when the print service stopped - now more plumbing is stopped up and XN is frozen upon initializing - that faulty installation at XN is the source of my problems.

If only I had proper clues on how the Xandros Package Manager works, I could just do the necessary tweaks as the problems come up, but nooo. Xandros tech support has stopped communicating with me.

As far "ocular" I'm not familiar with it. Not familiar with lots of things, that's why I'm a newbie. I have been using Open Office to create Adobe Acrobat Documents which is one of the reasons I use the reader.

Unfortunately, Open Office is now gone from the app menu and Xandros does not know how to pull up Open Office docs, but I do still see folders for Open Office here and there.

I wish I could tell you how the print service works - I would probably be able to fix it. Many console commands involve the /etc/init.d script, but I'm not sure what to do with that information. I do have the untainted etc directory backed up, but I don't know what to do with it. Do I just paste the good one in there? I wish I knew.

Today, I contacted a rep at linuxcertified.com who told me that I may be more interested in switching to a better linux OS rather than rebuilding the same old one from scratch. Right now, I have Xandros in dual boot with WinXP because, like I said, my IQ is just not up there enough to work with pure linux.

Since you mention it, I am thinking about greasing up my middle finger, taking a trip to NY and finding that Xandros tech support rep.

I appreciate your attention to this matter. Thanks in advance.