Apologies in advance for the long post.

I'm tearing my hair out over this.

After making changes to the Mandriva menu through menudrake, I lost all my icons in kcontrol. Running kcontrol from the command line gives this error: This happens when I switch the menu from the default style of 'Use system administrator settings' to the "What to do?" menu (also called Simplified Menu).

When I switch back to the 'Use system administrator settings' the kcontrol icons re-appear. Also, if I run as the user when using the Simplified Menu, the menu defaults back to the original (and the kcontrol icons re-appear). I've googled and searched the site, and have seen others with the same problem (maybe not the same cause though) but nobody seems to be able to help except to run 'update-menus' which I suppose does alleviate the problem, but not solve it for me.

Does anybody know how to resolve the situation, or even blow the mandriva/kde menu away with a bazooka as it is the worst menu I have ever had to deal with.

<rant>
The reason for this is if I make changes to the menu, strange things start to happen to the menu. This, of course, depends on what style of menu I am using. Sometimes the top level icons change into folders, sometimes I'll change a menu item and it's icon, the icon will change but the application that loads defaults to the original. It is so frustrating.

And this only appears to be a problem for KDE and Mandriva co-operation. Other WM's such as fluxbox don't have this problem. Why? Why? Why are they punishing me?!?
</rant>

That feels better.

If anyone else has had problems with their KDE menu I'd love to hear about it. Oh, and if you know how to resolve my 'issue' that would be handy.

I had this same problem recently but only in a single users account. (I was able to fix it)
Does your problem exist in all user accounts or just one?

Thanks for the reply.

As far as I am aware, this is only a problem for one user account. I am the only person to use my laptop, thus the only login account available. Root doesn't appear to have any problems with this.

I'm beginning to think that some of the problem seems to be from the fact that I upgraded from 10.1 to LE2005 which *could* have caused some problems. When I get time I'll create another user account and see if they have the same problem. If not, then I'll simply re-create my account.

What I did was to do a alt-cntl-f1
log into root
cd to /home
mv (user name) (user name).org
mkdir (user name)
chown (user name) (user name)
chgrp (user name) (user name)
cd /tmp
pwd (Make sure that you ion /tmp before proceeding.)
remove anything with you user name in it (rm -rf *(user name)* )
log out of root
do a alt-cntl-f7
log back into your account
in konqueror move all item back (except the .kde directory) from your (user name).org account back into you main account.
hopefully you don't use k-mail. (this is one of the reasons I don't use kmail)
This should fix the problem
I've done this many time over the last 6 years

my problem occured when i tried to edit the menu using menudrake...

Your way worked mate... Thanks and cheers.

Any other ways so that this won't happen again? Another program perhaps? Or manually editing the directory that contains the programs?

I'm a when it comes to hard core linux usage... I ain't a power user... so this is kinda new to me..

Their must be but I looked all over the pinternet and couldn't find an answer. I used this trick when I went from Kde1.# to Kde2.# that really messed up my configuration at the time. Now I use it most often when my 6yr old messes his account up beyond repair.

i noticed something when i ran update-menus -v

some of the running methods shown are /etc/menu-methods/simplified//gnome and
/etc/menu-methods/simplified//kde

i ain't no expert at this.. in fact i'm rather a newbie at this... but that ain't no directory or program rite?

there is a /etc/menu-methods/simplified/gnome* and /etc/menu-methods/simplified/kde3* program in the /etc/menu-methods/simplified directory though.

in fact, most (or maybe all) of the running methods are /something//theFile

should i change to another distro or perhaps an upgrade(or a reinstall) to version 10.1 will fix this?

Before I would switch check out the other fourms and see if anybody with that distro has the problem. On a dual boot system 10.2 and 10.2 both had the same problem. I belive this is a linux problemand not a distro problem.

darn...

then can i go about it manually? like playing with the directories and stuff, like one would on a Windows system?(XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Start Menu\Programs)

Rember in my instructions I didn't change any system setting! All changes were done to the users account. I believe that this is a KDE problem and it WILL happen on other distros. Luckily it dosen't happen often. The last time it happened to me I delete my .kde directory and all files & directory's that were with a week old and cleaned out the tmp directory and it still didn't fix the problem. After all that I just gave up and did like my instruction said. It's some file that dosen't seam to be changed.

ic... thanx mate...

whoa.. something weird just happened.

i read your last post then i decided to give up and just go to bed early... Left the computer on. and now all the icons have reappeared - minus the changes though.

Auto-recovery?

Go figure.

BlueStream, out.