OK, so it all started when i was trying to get NFS working properly, as samba shares are refused from linux boxes, but actually works perfectly on win.. ahh well... either way, i found that my username was different for the two machines i was connecting (500 on my rh71 server, 501 on my MD80 box), so being a i-think-i'm-so-cool-but-still-don't-know-enough-really kinda person, i just hacked my /etc/passwd file, and changed the UID for my account to 500 from 501. After chown and chgrp-ing like you wouldn't believe, i elimintaed all note of 501 owned files.

now... I can get into kde fine, but Gnome aint having any of it. I've got as far as gettign the gnome logo back up, and two icons show up on it, but it all goes too fast for me to say what they are. eitherway the gnome logo soon goes awol, and i'm left with a blank screen.

I tried creating a brand new user, and that account worked absolutely fine. but... uh uhhhhhhhh.

I've had to change things like /tmp/orbit-chris and things like that.. and now i just can't find anyhign else with the wrong UID, so i'm guessing there might be somethign hidden in a file or something...?

any vague ideas?

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How the hell did i manage to get this into Networking?? God knows...
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First I would look in all my ~/.gnome* directories (i.e., ~/.gnome ~/.gnome-desktop, ~/.gnome-private etc..) and see if they are still owned by the user you changed or if they just say 501 501 for user and group. If they just show the UID/GID 501 then do a chown -R new user new group on your .gnome directories. If not then I would set my default window manager to kde, tar up my ~/.gnome directory (to have a fallback), delete my ~/.gnome directory, exit KDE, change my default window manager to GNOME, run "startx" and see if gnome comes up. If it does you can get rid of your tarred .gnome directory and configure your new gnome desktop to your liking. Hope this helps.