click on internet browser nothing happens

ok just bought a 2 week old acer aspire and when i got home i turned it on and it found my wireless network straight away and updated itself.
BUT when i click on the internet symbol or wikapedia or anything to do with opening up the browser page... nothing happens.
am i missing something .....!

 

Windows or linux? Either way, sounds like the previous owner messed it up - it might be worth your while just reinstalling. If you have linux, did you get the recovery disk with it?

 

yes its running on linux and i have the recovery disk.
is it worth tying to re install everything

 

Well, with some poking around you can probably reverse whatever has been done, but if the previous owner has messed one thing up, he might have caused various other catastrophes. It's up to you.

If you want to try to get firefox working, then try the following. Get a terminal up (alt-f2, type terminal). Type

Code:

mousepad /home/user/.config/xfce4/desktop/group-app.xml

(to paste in a terminal, use ctrl+shift+v). This will use mousepad, a text editor, to call up the file which defines the icons in the 4 groups of your desktop. See here for a longer thread about how it works. You need to find the line that refers to your web browser icon. It will be something like

Code:

<app sequence="0">/usr/share/applications/linpus-web.desktop</app>

Then enter

Code:

sudo mousepad /usr/share/applications/linpus-web.desktop

, but obviously using whatever you've found to be your own entry. Note: the use of "sudo" at the front of that code signifies that you are executing that command as "root" - the super user. You can break stuff by using sudo incorrectly, so beware.
This is the file that defines how that particular icon appears, and what it does. Look for the line that says exec=firefox, or something similar. That is the line that gives the actual command to use to launch the browser. type the command (firefox, in my example line) into the browser, and see what you get. Presumably it will give some sort of error message, but that might clue us in to what's been done.