GConf problems after upgrading to 2.3.1

[Alex Duggan <aldug astrolinux com>]

Hey,

I recently upgrated to GConf-2.3.1 and am experiencing some very weird
errors.  Some application work fine and do not have any problems. 
Others such as gconf-editor die painfully spitting back the standard
message:

Failed to create : No such file or directory
gconf trace: Adding dir '/apps/gconf-editor/bookmarks'
gconf trace: Adding notify to engine at '/apps/gconf-editor/bookmarks'
Failed to create : No such file or directory
gconf trace: Error 'Failed to contact configuration server; some
possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit,
or you have stale NFS
locks due to a system crash. See http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/
for information. (Details -  1: IOR file '/lock/ior' not opened
successfully, no gconfd located: No such file or directory 2: IOR file
'/lock/ior' not opened successfully, no gconfd located: No such file or
directory)'
gconf trace: Unreturned error 'Failed to contact configuration server;
some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for
ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See
http://www.gnome.org/projects/gconf/ for information. (Details -  1: IOR
file '/lock/ior' not opened successfully, no gconfd located: No such
file or directory 2: IOR file '/lock/ior' not opened successfully, no
gconfd located: No such file or directory)'


I have read the gconf project page many times and can't find anything to
remedy the problem.  I am NOT using nfs and I have removed all lock
files in ~/.gconf/ and killed gconfd-2.  The following applications also
give this error:

gnome-theme-manager
metacity-2.5.0
gconf-editor

Other apps such as gedit and many of the control-center capplets work
fine.

gconftool-2 also gives a similar error.  Running 'gconf-sanity-check-2'
gives the folowing error:

Failed to create : No such file or directory


I'm really at a loss here and I can't find anything on the project page
that helps fix the problem.  Any suggestions?

Alex