Thanks, unfortunately the control isn't running from the menu either.
Error messages that appear are like:
"The panel has encountered a problem while loading OAFIID:
GNOME_MixerApplet"
Details: unknown CORBA exception ID:
' IDL: omg.org/CORBA/COMMON-FALURE1.0'
The message is followed by the question:
Do you want to delete the applet from your configuration?
I did a Google and found some references, but no fix