Pidgin not showing up after opening it

Question

I am on Ubuntu 11.10. I have installed Pidgin right after installing 11.10. As far as I remember everything worked great. However, for a while now (in the mean time I did some video drivers installation) every time I open Pidgin from the system tray, it's icon appears on the Unity launcher, but the window doesn't open.

I have managed to find only one pattern of steps which opens me the pidgin window:

1. Open pidgin from system tray. Icon appears on Unity launcher

2. Right click on the icon, quit.

3. Open pidgin again from system tray. Icon appears

4. Change my workspace to any other

5. Press the icon form the pannel

6. I am getting switched back to the original workspace and the Pidgin application finally opens.

It's a little frustrating....what do you suggest I should try?

Solution 1

This issue has been reported as a bug here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/1001405

Solution 2

A way to stop the unretrievable behavior:

Follow the instructions in the original question above in order to get to the buddy list.

Go to Menu > Tools > Preferences

Set "Show System Tray Icon" to "Always"

Solution 3

What worked for me, was to remove ~/.purple/prefs.xml. Lost lots of preferences (groups and stuff), but at least, the window returned.

Comments

[John Eipe]

its surprising how you found out this pattern...

[bioShark]

In the mean time I found out that I can skip steps 4 and 5. Still frustrating a bit, but got used to it. Actually the answer I have accepted here didn't solve the problem.

[John Eipe]

yes. i too tried reinstalling it but the problem remains. I'm using Ubuntu 12.04.

[John Eipe]

you can open this question again right? by deselecting the answer.

[Gabriel]

I'm having this same issue. This question is related (same problem) but it got closed: askubuntu.com/questions/76414/…

[Neptunno]

I too have the same problem. However I don't need to change workspace, I just close it on Launcher and then open it again.

[bioShark]

Yeap. It worked. Sometimes the most obvious actions are the solutions. Thanks for pointing that out to me.

[Muhammad Jawabreh]

glad to hear that :)