what is going on with Gnome

Hey I have another interesting little thing going on...

Gnome drops the little tray that shows which programs are open... The
application bar is what it is called in windows I think. It like shrunk
down to nothing then I removed it somehow while trying to get the thing
back to normal. I will probably figure it out sooner or later but was
wondering if anyone might know what to check.

BTW I ran fsck on my drive. It found a few bad clusters but I think they
are the same ones that have been bad since I got the thing. I am not
sure how to verify this though.

Craig aka stoney-- since there is another Craig I will go by my nic of
stoney (my last name is stone)