hi, one day after login i got a message, it was something like this:
"an error has occurred to /usr/lib/bonobo/server/GNOME_NotificationAreaApplet.server. do you want to delete this configuration?". first i clicked on "don't delete" and then rebooted because the notification area applet was not showing on the panel. after reboot the message prompted again and then i clicked on the "delete" button. i noticed that the notification area applet was missing from the applets list when right clicking to panel and selecting "add to panel...".

now i'm trying to reinstall the gnome-panel package, but i'm not able to do this because of this error message:
i have also tried ctrl+alt+F1 to logout from gui and make it through the command line but i get the same error.

please help me solve this, don't want to reinstall the whole system. thanks

PS: i'm using opensuse 11.1 with gnome

I don't know anything about opensuse but ctrl+alt+F1 doesn't normally log you out from the x-server. It just puts you in a virtual terminal (tty1 usually). ctrl+alt+F7 puts you back in the X-environment. ctlr+alt+backspace will stop and restart you x-server.
cheers,
jdk

yes, but i forgot to say that i also ran: killall gdm.
it seems that "sudo init <level_number>" does not work well in opensuse

just to correct myself, i just checked and "sudo init <level_number>" works in opensuse, i went into runlevel 1 and 3 and tried to reinstall gnome-panel*.rpm and i got the same error, so still looking for another solution

How did you tried to reinstall gnome-panel?

first went to yast then software management (or directly install software from the menu), searched for gnome-panel and clicked reinstall.
then tried this from terminal: sudo zypper install gnome-panel.
and finally went from gui to the command line interface (ctrl+alt+f1) and issued this command to change the run level: sudo init 3 (just like when installing the graphics driver manually, i thought to try to install it without xserver running), then i changed the directory to the installation dvd path where the package is located and typed: rpm -i gnome-panel*.rpm --force.

whatever method i try i get the same error, like i said in the first post

OK,try this;go to single user mode and run as root:
and after that run
If that ain't workin',we'll try something else.

here is the problem there is a stale pid or lock file that never got removed it is either in /var/ or your /tmp/ or /home/user/ this is a problem with gnome it has been an issue for over 10 years not sure why but seems the start up scripts after crash does not remove theses old sockets and lock files and pid files. one day I just gave up created a new user and copied my data over.