friends,

I have a centos 5.2 machine that
seems to have a problem with xwin.

upon a reboot
it complains that gnome has crashed.
my desktop bckground is 'there'
my desktop resolution seems to have changed
( maybe it was 1024 x 768 -- now 800x600??? )
the toolbars that were across the bottom of the screen that held shortcuts to programs and things is now blank -- empty.

what might i be able to do?

also when i tried to update i get complaints about missing dependencies ( perl stuff ...details avail if one thinks it is related )

thanks

If gnome is crashing, try booting into runlevel 3 and renaming .gnome, .gnome2, .gnome2_private, and any other .gnome files in you home directory before starting gnome.

this rather drives me nutty

if i remove gnome stuff
as in :: rm -rf .gnome .gnome2 .gconf .gconfd .metacity


then i will get back the contents of the panels.
It has been observed that this only works once - meaning if i reboot
the panels are blank -- then i do the above remove - and it works -- just then.
and by blank panels - i mean the grey bars - top & botom that hold things
like applications places system web browser email then the open office stuff and various things that i have added such as terminal.

how / why are the panels going blank?

darndest thing...
this is centOS 5.6 that has been upgraded from centOS 4.N

thanks

I have never encountered the situation you describe. Unfortunately, I don't currently have Gnome installed to even begin to suggest a potentially viable course of action. So I'll pull a suggestion out of thin air - if you create a new user, and log in as that user, does the same problem occur?