Somehow I lost my panel and my menu. I was able to restore my Panel w/possible issues but cannot regain the Menu Icon/Function.
Panel does not exist is this sequence: Desktop>Applications>Settings>(Missing)
Within the setting menu the list goes from Notifications to Power Manager, Panel should have existed between these two menu items.
Checked Synaptic, panel not installed. It's installed now but there is no Menu icon and Panel still doesn't get listed under Settings as before.
I ran xfce4-panel from the command line and got back this error: xfce4-panel-CRITICAL **: 10:25:33.964: Name org.xfce.Panel lost on the message dbus, exiting.