Sidebar reverted to Default

I don’t believe this is purely a 2.3 issue; everything looked fine after the installation of version 2.3. Then I went “plug-in happy” I guess. I downloaded NAVT and activated it. The next time I went into Presentation/Widgets, there were several NAVT widgets available, but I had not built my menus yet. I figured out how to do that, did it, and went back to Presentation/Widgets to see if the NAVT widgets made any more sense. They were gone. At some point (didn’t make a log of these events), I saw that my custom sidebars (I’m using Cutline 3-column) were gone. My ads are gone. Everything I’d put on the right-hand side is gone except the Google search box. The left-hand side reverted to the default, and the calendar popped back down into “Available widgets”. If I put it back in, the Categories, Archives, and Admin disappear but DO NOT pop back down into the available widgets. So, I’m dead in the water. I’ve deactivated NAVT, but that didn’t change anything. I haven’t messed with any code in any file (and hope I don’t have to!). Where did my stuff go? Is it gone forever? Or if I flick the right switch, it’ll magically appear once again. The blogroll and a second blogroll which is links not blogs also disappeared.

I’ve been ignoring it thinking I might get a response from the NAVT forum, but…. need to move on. Any suggestions?

I’ve also deactivated all Google plug-ins except Search and Analytics because the page wouldn’t load at all.