16.04, cinnamon, logging in to background only

Question

Team moved to a new floor; system power was removed while I was at lunch (ugh). Powered on at new location, logged in, and... the desktop environment stated failed to start session "cinnamon".

I have tried:

1. update packages sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
2. uninstalling and reinstalling nvidia-375
3. uninstalling and reinstalling cinnamon
4. installing cinnamon-desktop-environment
5. uninstalling, reinstalling, and resetting compiz settings

After #3, the error message went away, but the desktop environment never loaded. Instead, I just get my background image. No desktop icons, no taskbar, no user interaction at all.

The only thing I can do is load up a different console control-alt-F1 and do stuff from there. At this point, I'm not sure where to go to try to solve this. Any thoughts/helps/hints?

Answer 1

The GPU was jostled during transit to the new floor. So I reseated the GPU. Now the desktop environment loads.

I now need to reset my theme settings, re-add icons to the tray, etc.