problem with display panel
 

I use gnome and at the moment when I login I get a message telling me that a panel has been detected running and it will be closed now. but when I click on ok, the message keeps repeating. tha fact is that I access my desktop. the icons home, etc are not displayed on the screen start menu also is not displayed. Can someone tell me what is the problem and how to fix it ?

thanx

Does it happen on all users or just your regular user? If it is just this user a possible fix would be to delete your ~/.gnome directory. The deletion will of course cause the loss of any custom settings you may have made. When you login after the deletion Gnome will start with the original default settings.

I don't know the exact cause of this problem. It could have been an unusual shutdown that left gnome thinking that the panel is still alive.

Bill

Are you running as root? If so, DON'T. Funny things happen to Gnome if you log in as root.

Problem with gnome desktop
 

The problem with the display panel occurs only with simple user account. I have deleted the directory .gnome in the home directory but the problem still remains. when I listed the hidden files in home, i noticed other gnome related directories such as .gnome-desktop... Does these directories also have to be removed since the problem concerns gnome desktop? also, if i delete these directories, won't that affect the behaviour of KDE as I am usin g KDE since I got this problem with gnome..

If it were me I would go ahead and remove all the .gnome related directories, especially since this seems to involve just one user. When Gnome starts up it will create any default directories or files that it needs. For example, when you create a new user their initial home directory contains very little until Gnome or other programs run creating hidden directories and any files that they need to store info between sessions.

I don't have a lot of experience with KDE, but highly doubt it is dependent on .gnome* directories. If you don't feel safe removing these files and directories move them to a subdirectory or back them up somewhere.

Bill