after the debacle a few hours back I managed to get a working desktop after using an ethernet cable and sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

But now when I try to run ubuntu software center from CLI this is what I get

rick@Abigail:~$ sudo software-center 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/software-center", line 34, in <module>
    import gtk
ImportError: No module named gtk

Any guesses how to fix this. The search box on synaptic is also missing. It has something to do with module named axi. I think the both are related.