Crazy blank dialog boxes and windows at login. Can't login as user
 

I am running RH9 with Gnome desktop. Occasionally when I login as a regular user, instead of the splash screen that shows all the modules being loaded, I get a bunch of windows with nothing on them except the green check button. All I can do is CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE and then login as root, delete the user and user's home directory and then create the user again. After this happened several times and I got frustrated with reconfiguring my desktop and email, etc. etc. every time. I backed the home dir up to another folder. Then when it happened I would just restore the contents of the home directory (all the hidden conf. files) and then the user could login just fine. I guess it's a problem with the user's configuration files in the home dir getting corrupted somehow.

Can anyone help me???!!!

I agree, it sounds as though your configuration files are getting corrupt.

Does this happen after a system crash?

If you have a backup copy of the users configuration files you could just try copying them back

EG. (logged on as root)

mkdir /backup_files
cp -pr /home/user/.??* /backup_files/.

This will recursively copy all the files in /home/user that begin with a full stop and are at least 3 characters log.
This will also keep the user group permissions and modified times of the files.

To restore these files cp -pr /backup_files/.??* /home/user/.

I hope this helps, but I would also keep an eye on the system logs to find out why these files are being corrupted!

I have discovered that the problem is definitely in the Gnome config files in the users home directory. If I delete that stuff (.gnome, .gconf, etc.) at least then all I have to do is log in as the user and restore the custom desktop settings (like the size of the panel, single click to open, etc., etc.). That's a lot better than having to restore ALL the desktop launchers, as well as ALL the application settings (like Pan, Evolution, Firefox, ...). I am trying to home in on exactly which single file needs to be deleted (because it's corrupted).

I also have a suspicion that this has something to do with selecting the "save current settings" option on the logoff screen. The craziness seems to occur if I check that selection while a Samba share (on a Windows machine) is mounted to the Linux machine. If I unmount the share and THEN log out and save settings, it doesn't seem to happen.