I have the same behavior on a dell dimension 5400 desktop. (about 3-4 years old). Switching to tty1 and back does the same thing, I see the panels for a flash and then they disappear. Watching daemon.log, I think the following line appeared when i switched back, not sure if it was a coincidence or not:
Oct 5 15:19:44 compy086 acpid: client connected from 5404[0:0]
I have the same behavior on a dell dimension 5400 desktop. (about 3-4 years old). Switching to tty1 and back does the same thing, I see the panels for a flash and then they disappear. Watching daemon.log, I think the following line appeared when i switched back, not sure if it was a coincidence or not:
Oct 5 15:19:44 compy086 acpid: client connected from 5404[0:0]