I have already looked at the similar questions, but none of the solutions there worked for me. Basically, I can edit and remove icons just fine when I am in a session, but the next time I am logged in, they are reset to the default.

Even more perplexing is this. If I start dconf-editor, and navigate to desktop>unity>launcher, it shows the favorites that are supposed to be there, yet the default ones are still in the Launcher.

I have already tried sudo apt-get purge unity and then sudo apt-get install unity from a GNOME session, but to no avail. Any suggestions?

Edit: I also tried running gksudo dconf-editor to run the program with elevated privileges. Again I navigated to desktop>unity>launcher. This time the default string was there, but when I tried to edit it, it would not change to what I typed.