Gnome 3 application Icons disappeared

Question

I edited my main menu settings (unchecked items inside a sub menu) when it happened that the window freezed and all entries on the left side disappeared (Office, System, Settings, Games, ...). I didn't think much about it, but when I restarted my computer all application entries in my menu and my favorites (quickstart bar on the left side) were gone. When I go to activities -> applications I just see the "All" entry without any items to click on.

~/.config/menu/gnome-applications.menu

is an empty file and

~/.config/menu/gnome-settings.menu

has the folowing content:

<!DOCTYPE Menu
  PUBLIC '-//freedesktop//DTD Menu 1.0//EN'
  'http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/menu-1.0.dtd'>
<Menu>
    <Name>Desktop</Name>
    <MergeFile type="parent">/etc/xdg/menus/gnome-settings.menu</MergeFile>
</Menu>

I also looked into the files under /etc/xdg/menus. They look like template files without any reference to actual installed programs. I assume that due to a bug it deleted all my menu settings. Is there any way to restore at least the default menu? Or are there any other places to look for my old configuration?

Answer 1

Whenever I bork a config file I just use ctrl+alt+f2 to kill x and drop to command line and then I remove the config file and restart X.

Gnome3 will then create the default config file.