I seem to have royally messed up GNOME. First I ran into a problem that looked to be a bug related to the vertical placement of the Gnome-panel. Now Start Here doesn't work and I can't access applications or control icons via a mozilla window.

If I click through all the gnome errors when logging in, I have a semifuntional desktop. If I bypass the Start here icon and right click to open a new window, then use go to drop down to start-here:/// I get the icons but I also get errors that mozilla can't access anything.

Should I reinstall Gnome?

Does it matter if I am running an older version of RH Linux and install a newer Gnome? I can't seem to locate the CDs from when this system was built 2-3 years ago. It is running RH 8 but v 2.4-18.

Any suggestions?

I started all of this by trying to get the system mounted on a XP-pro system--finally got samba configured properly but apparently don't have permissions set right because I can't write files -- it says 0 disk space (available to the user via samba).

if gnome al goes tits up as a normal user, then it'ds nothing to do with the gnome installation itself. A normal user can not meddle with it, and as such reinstalling it will be of no use. Instead I would suggest deleting or renaming the settings on your home directory ~/.gnome2 i think (i normally rename everything starting with ".gnome" to ".oldgnome" or something. next time you load gnome, you'll have the dfault settings back again.

Thank you! That did the trick!

There are many references on the net to problems with Gnome caused by the panel being in the vertical position. This solved it for me because my default settings have it at the bottom of the screen!

Thank you again!!!