how to restore vanished desktop?

[Bill LaChenal <billachenal gmail com>]

Hi,

De temps en temps, everything on my desktop vanishes (except the ground beneath, the panels, & a stickynote !).
This generally happens when I've killed another process (force miscreant to quit, or exit terminal,yes).

My clutter doesn't just move to another desktop (<=CtrlAlt=> style); all desktops go to ground.          .

Is it possible to refresh / restart / quick_recover the  desktop handler, without going through a complete restart? 

How?
(And is it advisable to do so?)

A re-starter from a panel would be neat.

I couldn't find this in the docs, even the admin. (Maybe not looking well enough?) Perhaps something should be there.

And perhaps desktop should have (optional) crash-persistence, resilience, anyway?

Regards,
              Bill


On my laptop I have Mint Helena8 32bit, 2.6.31.14-generic Linux, & GNOME 2.28.1

And I'm fairly new to this, despite a mainframe background.