so long, everybody..
gonna try to be as clear as I can, but this case is no so simple (for me) to explain, it history is long, so plz be patient..

First act:
trying to start from the beginning, this issue start when I made the (big)mistake of downgrading (yes! the opposite of upgrading) my installed version of evolution.. I did that coz evolution wasn't working fine, I saw in linuxpackages that a previous version of evo...tgz was better rated than the
one I had, so I uninstalled the newer and installed in it place the older version. Must say it wasn't just an older snapshot... it was a tgz designed for a previous release of slack! --I've installed a
slack10.0tgz over a slack10.1release-- now I know: B*I*G mistake.
Of course, evolution doesn't work, plus gnome beguns to fail. In vane I uninstalled and re-installed the proper evo. version: gnome continued failing. The exact error was nautilus doesn't work, so in gnome there wasn't the gnome-file-explorer (nautilus by itself), no desktop background nor folders in the desktop. I also reinstalled all of the gnome packages from the slack-disc 2, without progress.
What I did was stopping using gnome. In spite of not using gnome as desktop enviroment, I still used the gnome apps. --I use to have gnome-terminal as my default VT in KDE and Ion3.
Later I discovered the real problem with evolution, and it was no hard to fix it, so the remaining
problem was the related with nautilus, so I stop using gnome and I forget the problem.

ACT2: Nowadays
just today I was traying to upgrade my ion3 version to take advantage of all its utilities, but something was wrong.
There are no 'recently' snapshot of ion in l.pack., so I downloaded the tar.gz, I installed the lua.tgz libraries (they're nessesary for newers versions of ion, as it says in its README file)
and I've used a slackBuild script to make the .tgz (must recognize it was my first time using such script) , but it doesn't work. So I use the procedure: configure->make->(su)checkintall
and then I had my own ion3.tgz.
I didn't uninstall the previous ion3 -just in case, and I installed the newer one over it, but It didn't work.
the new Ion didn't start, so I uninstalled the new one, and there was the old one...working, so I thought: "no big deal: no new version, but nothing wrong happens" ...I was wrong.

Since that moment, much things in my system are up-side down.
the first I notice: when starting gnome-console, an error msg prompts telling me something was wrong with a config file, that it can affect the VT performance. And it was. Gnome-terminal start with the out-of-the-box default configuration (black fg. and yellow bg.) there wasn't my "personal" shell I use to have (I mean this one: machinename@username$), in it place was the raw one (something like "bash-3.00$").
The next I notice was wine refused to work (I was proud of wine coz it was working just fine..)
the error msg is something like I don't have privileges to get /tmp/.wine-1000 . So I su, and change all of the privileges of such files, but the error msg remains -not the same, but a new one related with that files and privileges.. I don't remember it text now.
The next screwed app: evolution. when I call it, it start as the very first time running in the system...asking me my name, my mail account, etc..
A curious case is with openoffice: when I call it in the shell, just nothing happens.. no app opens. but, when I run 'top' cmd, I can see the soffice process! --watta strange thing..

I can't say if wine works logged as root, coz I never installed winetools as root, and it's the same thing for the others apps: I just never used them logged as root, so I can't tell if they're right or wrong in root's profile (well, since the 'first act', no single user can run gnome properly..neither root.)
Its looks like I lost my "personal config files" ...but must say with aterm and eterm the "personal-shell loading process" is ok.

That's why I'm wonder which is the more 'painless' procedure to fix this problem..
Am I in big trouble?
Should I practice the well-known-mswindows-recipe of formatting the partition and re-intall the entire OS.. or can it be solved with a little help of mi friends here in LQ?

What do U think, people?
any help is welcome.
thanks in advance

If you don't have any important data that cannot be backed up, Rinstall. It will save you time and headaches on the long run.

Agree

ok, pals..thanx 4 answering..
well, this is the wonder of linux: I mess it up, yes..but just my
personal profile.. the rest of the system is ok, so I took the easy way of making a new user and migrating all of my stuff to it, and that's all -- Penguin rock!!