so i was playing with the "devices" applet in KDE and it began asking for an application to open the hard drive i clicked on. i thought this was strange since it had never done this before, so i typed 'konqueror' and it said that the drive linked to a folder and it was expecting it to be a file. this resulted in KDE to crash and when the control panel returned, all of the apps in the apps menu were missing. also, any file i double-clicked, even txt files, brought up the "open with..." application selection panel with no list of applications to select from, however i was able to type in "kwrite" and it would open the file with no problem. Obviously the apps are still there, but i would like to get the apps menu working again. any help would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry for the vague description, i'm a linux newbie who has been using for less than a week.

What happens when you restart x? (hit ctrl-alt-bkspc, and log back in to kde)

no change. i've tried restarting x, shutting down and rebooting the machine, and even booted into gnome and all my apps are missing there as well! i've also tried using the install cd's to update my installation, but that failed to produce any real results either. Thanks for the help.

OK. Try to update your menus with menudrake. Just launch and save. See if the tool has had a burp. Also, I would update all drake tools.

Awesome. Running and saving with menudrake fixed everything! As for updating, that will have to wait until i can afford a new modem (mine's a winmodem and doesn't like to stay working in Windows). Anyway, thanks for all the help!