All text missing in Menu, Cinnamon LM17

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Paphlagon
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All text missing in Menu, Cinnamon LM17

Post by Paphlagon »

This is a real shot in the dark. Any suggestion about what I might try, even to get more clues, is appreciated.

I have an old Dell desktop I've been waiting to load Linux Mint 17 on, and figured I'd give Cinnamon a try first. When I boot from CD, everything appears to load fine, except for two things. One, the menu bar on the bottom appears fuzzy, where the text appears fuzzed over. Two, and more importantly, the menu text is missing!

When I click on Menu in the lower left corner, the dark grey box (that would normally contain a number of menu items to choose from) appears above it, but is empty. There's nothing there, seemingly. The same is true if I right-click the menu button: no text.

It seems that the links are there, though. When I randomly click on something, I get some action. I opened a browser, hit shutdown, etc. I just don't know what I'm hitting, because that whole area is blank.

Anyone ever see this? Any suggestions for what to try?

I already tried Alt-F2 resetting cinnamon. The problem persisted. All of this is happening running off the CD -- I have not installed to the HD yet.

Dell Optiplex 320 from 2007. A Pentium D with 1 gb ram, onboard video and a newer 1TB HD. Fairly generic LCD display, a Dell using a VGA connector, running 1280x1024.

I guess my next step is to burn a MATE or KDE dvd and try that on the machine.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
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teilnehmer

AW: All text missing in Menu, Cinnamon LM17

Post by teilnehmer »

I had a clue until you wrote that you're on a live dvd... that is strange.
My clue was some misconfiguration in Cinnamon. To test, I would've advised to create a new user, and if that had verified the hypothesis, I'd have proposed to either switch users or delete the config-files for cinnamon, so they'll be reloaded. Alternatively, one could apt-get remove cinnamon and then apt-get install it again (don't know the exact package name right now, sorry).

But on a live system... bad burn? Do you happen to have an old Linux system on the HD whose settings might magically influence the live system?
Paphlagon
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Re: All text missing in Menu, Cinnamon LM17

Post by Paphlagon »

Bad burn? I suppose it's possible. I'm going to try out the same disc on another PC today.

Do I happen to have an old Linux system on the HD? Why yes, i do. Most of the 1 TB drive is WinXP, but I added a 30 gb partition recently with crunchbang linux on it. Do you think that really might influence matters?
teilnehmer

AW: All text missing in Menu, Cinnamon LM17

Post by teilnehmer »

Well, if all the likely theories can't be true, we need to consider the unlikely ones. :)
I have no idea how the existing Linux would manage to insert settings into a live system, but since I also have no idea why on earth the live system would work, but not the menu, maybe they are a good match!

Trying the disc on another computer might be interesting. You could also try booting from a USB pendrive, if your computer can do that. Load times are quicker, and it's a different approach.

I mean, there's only very little we as users can do wrong when starting a live system - most problems are user-created, but in this case looking at the medium seems a better choice.
teilnehmer

AW: All text missing in Menu, Cinnamon LM17

Post by teilnehmer »

Paphlagon, did you find out what was wrong? I'm curious.
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