Is there any way to reset the System Settings Control Panel page?

The Control Panel was fine, but the for no apparent reason, PRIVACY, BACKGROUND and a host of other icons have vanished...

My system seems pretty messed up after the upgrade... Shutdown, Reset, and Logout from the menu no longer work either...

However, I can launch the Privacy panel from the terminal:

activity-log-manager

and it runs... so why is this, and others, now missing from the System Setting Control Panel?

I have checked and: activity-log-manager-control-center is installed

Is there a config file I can check, or a setting in Gconf where the list of icons are referenced?

I have run - in desperation -

sudo apt-get purge unity*
sudo apt-get purge ubuntu*
sudo apt-get autoremove

Run Gconf-cleaner and Janitor

then re-installed all packages

Still the same issue....?