Ubuntu 11.11 to 12.04 upgrade leaves blank or empty desktop on first reboot

I did an 'update-manager -d' upgrade of a pretty stock Ubuntu 11.11 to 12.04. It asked 2-3 questions about overwriting changed config files, which I allowed, otherwise the upgrade was very smooth. But when I rebooted and logged in, the desktop is empty. The display is working and the default wallpaper is up, and it says "ubuntu 12.04 LTS" in the lower left, but that's it. No Unity (no it's not just hiding), no hot keys, no nothing.

When I CTRL-ALT-F1 and log in, then run 'ps auwx' though, I see a bunch of Unity lenses and stuff. And there's a Gedit session that I didn't open (but may have had open prior to the upgrade and reboot). So the stuff seems to be running, I just can't see it. When I move the mouse around the screen, the cursor changes too, like I'm over a Gedit session (so I change from arrow to "I" bar, then back to arrow on the other side). But I see nothing on the screen but wallpaper.

The machine is a test Dell Inspiron 1524 laptop that previously ran Ubuntu 11.11 OK, though it ran the hardware hot and would hard lock & crash from time to time while sitting there with maybe a few Firefox tabs open and nothing else. I can access it from TTY1 or SSH, but no gui.

Nothing much jumps out at me from the logs, maybe except this:
gnome-session[2875]: WARNING: Failed to start app: Unable to start application: Failed to execute child process "wicd-gtk" (No such file or directory)

Then I tried a 'sudo halt' from my SSH session and hit ESC on the splahs screen. I get "...System halted." but it did NOT power off. I left that sit there for several minutes, but no power off. I powered off manually, yanked power and better and let it sit for a few minutes, then powered up again.

This did not help, same symptoms...

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: xorg 1:7.6+12ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-20.32-generic 3.2.12
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-20-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 1.95-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Mar 24 13:52:37 2012
DistUpgraded: 2012-03-24 13:42:38,082 DEBUG enabling apt cron job
DistroCodename: precise
DistroVariant: ubuntu
GraphicsCard:
 Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (primary) [8086:2a02] (rev 0c) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
   Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:022f]
   Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:022f]
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
MachineType: Dell Inc. Inspiron 1525
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 TERM=screen
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LC_COLLATE=C
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-20-generic root=UUID=6f742e19-1931-4ba0-ad52-cdd5b5189a63 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: xorg
Symptom: display
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-03-24 (0 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 10/16/2008
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A16
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.chassis.type: 8
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA16:bd10/16/2008:svnDellInc.:pnInspiron1525:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn:rvr:cvnDellInc.:ct8:cvr:
dmi.product.name: Inspiron 1525
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.
version.compiz: compiz 1:0.9.7.2-0ubuntu1
version.ia32-libs: ia32-libs 20090808ubuntu35
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.32-1ubuntu1
version.libgl1-mesa-dri: libgl1-mesa-dri 8.0.2-0ubuntu2
version.libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental: libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental N/A
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 8.0.2-0ubuntu2
version.xserver-xorg-core: xserver-xorg-core 2:1.11.4-0ubuntu7
version.xserver-xorg-input-evdev: xserver-xorg-input-evdev 1:2.7.0-0ubuntu1
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.14.99~git20111219.aacbd629-0ubuntu2
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.17.0-1ubuntu4
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:0.0.16+git20111201+b5534a1-1build2