I've solved this myself, .cache was not writable by the user in question, however there doesnt appear to be a way to launch the applet manually (or at least I couldnt find one) to debug via terminal.
Thanks, J ** Changed in: gnome-panel (Ubuntu) Status: New => Invalid -- OAFIID:GNOME_FastUserSwitchApplet encountered a problem loading FastUserSwitchApplet https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/553403 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs