Nautilus DBus error; system can't load updates, can't open synaptic, screen icons missing

[SpongeBob]

Ubuntu was installed a couple of weeks ago and worked fine. Today I started it up and got a message saying something like:

 "Could not display x-nautilus-desktop:///; Error: DBus error org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ExecFailed: Failed to execute program /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd: Success. Please select another viewer and try again."

Certain icons were missing from the desktop. Then I discovered the update manager couldn't install listed updates. After installing these updates from terminal, a message came up saying most updates were installed except "Linux kernel packages" which were held back. Tried to install these various ways. I also tried Add/Remove to check which problematic programs I might've installed recently, but it wouldn't open. Synaptic also wouldn't open.

ProblemType: Package
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ErrorMessage: subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 1
Package: linux-restricted-modules-2.6.27-11-generic 2.6.27-11.16
SourcePackage: linux-restricted-modules
Title: package linux-restricted-modules-2.6.27-11-generic 2.6.27-11.16 failed to install/upgrade: subprocess post-removal script returned error exit status 1
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-9-generic i686

[Lupine (thelupine)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better, but unfortunately I've been unable to reproduce your issue on Ubuntu 8.10. I have seen other similar error messages that were typically fixed by either waiting a few days and then trying to redo the familiar:

sudo apt-get update

...and then performing the update again. Are you still having problems trying to perform this update?

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.