KDE4 desktop effects work in root but not in user account
 

I upgraded to Slackware -Current earlier after a fresh install of 13.1, bringing KDE up to version I'm using KDE 4.5.5. I logged in with my User account, configured stuff, installed stuff, the usual. I even logged out and rebooted a few times. Everything worked as expected. I logged into XFCE for a few hours while I transfered files (for some reason Dolphin wasn't reading the folder sizes correctly and wasn't transferring everything, I had no such problems in XFCE). When I logged back into KDE I found that desktop effects weren't active, even the work spaces on the left were arranged in a line rather than two by two. Also, Akonadi server doesn't start up when I log in anymore.

In Desktop Effects settings I am told that they are not available, though I am given no reasons why. I tried to restart them and got some error message about how another program was stopping them, and I could use a keyboard shortcut to activate them. I did so but nothing really happened. After a couple of restarts I no longer get that error and I do have basic effects like transparent panels and windows become transparent when I move them, but my All Effects tab is empty. For the sake of experimentation I logged in as root and everything was as it should be; Akonadi started up, workspaces were arranged two by two, my all effects tab was full and I could use any effect that I wanted... I'm not sure what is going on, I have very limited KDE experience, so any help would be appreciated.

"restarting" should not change anything, so you probably messed something up unwittingly. And you probably already have heard that starting a desktop as root may have strange side-effects.

But actually things do work, so this does not seem to be a hardware/driver problem. Create a new user and see whether your desktop behaves as expected when running as this new user.

Oddly enough, everything works fine on another account, even though the only things I changed that have anything to do with effects is that I ticked a couple of effects, never messed with anyone else, the only configuration files I really messed with was Lilo, fstab, and inittab. Well, after the effects stopped working I switched compositing type from OpenGL to XRender just to see what happens and nothing changes, but now I can't switch back to OpenGL, even with effects turned off, I get the message "Failed to activate desktop effects using the given configuration options."