ok - problem solved... it was a problem with users...
i had a user called hal but none called haldaemon... deleting the user hal and forcing a re-install of hal solved it - the user haldaemon was automatically created... seems like something which could easily be fixed... -- hal-device-manager does not load https://launchpad.net/bugs/31517 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
