On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 11:28 AM, Rick Stevens <ricks@alldigital.com> wrote:

Killing gnome-shell will not necessarily free the
machine up and make the GUI work as it is a significant component of
the desktop

It won't. If you unceremoniously kill off gnome-shell, the desktop no longer works at all.

and the real solution is to restart your desktop session
somehow (perhaps by killing your session manager) or reboot.

In some cases there may be another way. Try pressing ALT-F2. If you get the "Enter a Command" window, enter "r" and then ENTER. That will restart gnome-shell. Sometimes this works for other sorts of desktop hangs as well.

--Greg