I have the same problem using Mandrake 10.1 community and Gnome 2.6. I tried issuing 'gnome-panel' from a terminal but this was not recognised, which was very annoying. Perhaps it is there but I don't know where - somewhere not on the path obviously.
I fear I may have to delete my configuration and allow Gnome to recreate a default setup for my user name
Did you find a way to retrieve things?