Why does the $%&#@!# NUMLOCK key dies? :(

[kitepilot at kitepilot.com]

Hello cybernetic intelligence: 

This is what's happening:
Every so often, and in several Ubuntu machines that I take care of (and some 
KDE machines before I ditched KDE), suddenly, and for not apparent reason, 
the NUMLOCK key quits working and all I get is control characters regardless 
of the state of the key. 

The only solution I could find in KDE was to remove the ~/.kde directory, 
but as Gnome seems to have more than one configuration directory, my Gnome 
solution is to remove anything I can't surely identify (like .ssh, .mozilla, 
.wine, etc)
Most times this happens (it would be funny if it wasn't happening to me) I 
am in a RUSH, so I just "get it fixed" and live on. 

Does anybody know a solution to this issue without resorting to such bloody 
butchering?
It's kindda of a pain to rebuild every configuration setting...  :( 

Hope I can get some help...
Enrique A. Troconis