Bug#865759: Point release 9.2 seems to fix it

[TarotApprentice]

Clean installed again after yesterdays point release of Stretch (9.2). I only has a 9.1 netinst which installed kernel 4.9.0-3. After a reboot and no desktop again ssh’ed into the machine and did apt update && apt upgrade. That offered kernel 4.9.0-4 (4.9.51) which I installed. After a reboot the desktop comes up with status bar, icons and task bar as expected.

I think you can chalk this one up to a kernel bug in versions 4.9.0-3.