On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 6:14 AM, Ted Gould <ted@gould.cx> wrote:

> On Tue, 2009-08-18 at 20:21 -0700, Mark Phillips wrote:
> > Since I can't get gnome to work with my existing user directories,
> > what is the best way to remove all of gnome and then reinstall it on
> > Debian squeeze?
>
> Chances are this won't solve your problem.  Unless you've messed with
> things outside your home directory, reinstalling should put them back in
> exactly the same place that they were before.  In general, desktop
> packages install very few (if any) configuration files that would change
> over time.
>
> The easiest way to test to see if it's your settings or your install
> though is to just create a brand new account.  If that works then it's
> probably not the packages installed.  On Ubuntu we created a "Guest
> Session" that'll do this (along with a bunch of other things) I'm not
> sure if that feature has been imported into Debian or not.
>
>                --Ted
> ,

 Ted,

I tried creating a new  account, and it works just fine. My old account is
messed up somehow. I removed all the .gnome* dirs in my old account and did
a reboot, but the account is still messed up. When I log in, all I get is a
blank menu bar and the background wallpaper. Three processes take off and I
have to reboot or the machine locks up. Please see attached screen shot of
top.