I reinstalled 8.04 and the problem went away. I know this isn't as satisfying as finding and fixing the problem, but it's really nice to have everything working again. My home directory survived the reinstall, so I reloaded various apps including Thunderbird and GnuCash, and they were able to find their files and carry on working as if nothing had happened. Result!
My guess is that my system was damaged when I upgraded it from Gutsy to Hardy. There may be a bug in the upgrade process. -- nautilus cannot handle https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/233889 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs