@guineapig :-
Can you flesh-out your statement just a bit further, please? When you say "'X' was a complete mess", can you describe it in more detail?
This sort of info will give us a better idea of what your "complete mess" is like. I'm suspecting the PuppyPin file may have either not been read correctly, OR it may even have gone AWOL. I had more or less the same thing happen to me, with Tahrpup, during the first couple of months I was using it, some 9-9½ years ago.
This happened several times over the space of the next few weeks, and because I customize my desktops quite extensively, it took forever to reset everything again.....and again.....AND again. I got so fed-up with doing this that I scripted a routine that saved my PuppyPin file to a 'safe' location (along with a confirmation message) prior to power-off OR re-boot. I also added further scripts and a Menu entry to 'reset' it again IF things had gone tits-up upon a restart...
(The 'PuppyPin' file is what's known as a dynamic, 'live' file. It holds information about your background wallpaper, and x,y positions for every icon on the desktop, with info for the icon itself AND what it launches. Every time you make any change to your desktop, this information is written to the PuppyPin file in 'real time', AS the change is made).
Let us have a bit more detail, if you would. If "X" actually IS broken, you'd get no desktop showing at ALL, mess or no....and that's unlikely, if was working previously..!
Mike.