Problem with gconf

[32G Bob's Orange mailer <boblithgow orange fr>]

 Hi, 
   I use Linux 10.04 on a 32G memory stick.

I must have left my machine on last night for this morning the battery
was fully discharged. 

On re-starting, I got an icon on the task bar saying there had been a
crash.

An error window also appeared saying:-
         Gconf error: failed to contact configuration server; some
        possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking
        for ORBit, or you may have stale NFS locks due to a system
        crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information
        (Details - 1: server ping error:
        IDL:omg.org/COBRA/COMM_FAILURE:1.0)
        
        I don't know much about command line stuff in Linux, so can you
        please tell me, in simple terms, how to reset/reload Gconf. 
        
        Thanks in advance, Bob Lithgow