My virtual keyboard seems to have gone invisible - when it activates, all I see is a big empty black space where the keys should be. I still see the white textbox with an active cursor, and in the top left corner of the keyboard area I have a dropdown arrow that I can dismiss the keyboard with.

But that's it. The keys are not just invisible, they are not there - pressing the area does nothing.

I must admit, I was mucking about trying to free up some root space, and I might have deleted some hildon-type thing. That's just a big guess, though - I was trying to update Knots and it told me I was missing a "libhildon". That could be unrelated coincidence though, I don't know.

Does anyone have any experience or solution to this problem? I'm not really looking forward to reflashing, if I don't have to. I was able to update to the new firmware today, and that didn't help, fwiw.

Thanks for any help.

install uKeyboard from Extra. You'll be fine.

Ok, I did that, but it doesn't seem to have changed anything. I rebooted as well, just to be sure.

Here is what I'm looking at

hmmm reflash will fix this.

Boohoo! I don't want to lose all my programs and settings! Isn't there another way?

If not, where's the most user-friendly reflash wiki/howto?

I had something really similar to you after fiddling with the virtual keyboard files. Here is my adventure http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=40619

I don't think you can do anything other than flashing, but the backup app did very well restoring about everything on my device. It's like I never flashed. I chose not to backup installed app's list, as I preferred to just install everything the first time I needed it, but all the settings of the apps got perfectly in place, so when I chose to reinstall an app, it's settings were there.
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WELLBUTRIN PROBLEMS

Actucally, several programs cannot be updated because of the 'missing files'. If they are uninstalled, they cannot be installed.

If you are using a keyboard layout other than English, try changing it back to English. It ought to bring back the little buttons.

"My system32 folder was taking a lot of space so I deleted some of the unnecessary files. Now my computer doesn't boot anymore. Halp!"

make restore in phone settings and restart the device, must working.

Yes something like that, although I was just trying to revert to pre 1.1 vkb. And the cursor was blinking next to flasher.exe...
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Sunset Boulevard Residence