gnome-panel no longer starts

[Red Squirrel]

I noticed when I reboot my server, the bottom panel no longer appears. I always have to call "gnome-panel &" in the console to get it going.

Now, that wont work either. It says it's already running, which it's not. Why would this happen?

Using Fedora Core 9... I know it's old, but upgrading is a pretty major thing, so I'm not ready to do it yet. This server runs a lot of stuff. I usually only upgrade when I build a new one that way I have them running side by side and migrate stuff over.

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Are you running multiple desktops, and does gnome-panel appear on any of them?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Only one desktop, though it's in a VNC session. The console stays in text mode.

I managed to start it as root. Though it's still weird because it never did this before. I've been trying to troubleshoot a disk I/O crash issue so I've been rebooting a lot, but now I've tried everything and gave up so it probably wont be rebooted for a while.

 

[KillerBee]

You can try creating to new user account
and login to see if the panel reappears

If that works then try renaming or removing these directories in your home directory:
.gnome
.gnome2
.gconf
.gconfd

you will lose any customizations you made to the desktop
and it will revert back the original default setup