Comment 5 for bug 148413

I tried changing the load order (making sure gnome-panel was loaded after nautilus, as suggested somewhere online), but that didn't help. Gnome-panel loads fine, but it seems that when compiz loads it just turns invisible.

I managed to get my panel back to a visible stat by turning of "clone output" in ccsm. Not sure how or why this works, but I'm glad it does for me :) Hope this can help some of you out there.