Bonobo Activation Server goes to sleep

[Geoff Hacker <geoffreyhacker bigpond com>]

Hi everyone,

GNOME 2.4.0 is hanging on me the first time I start it up. It is very
strange. The system plays the first half-second of the gnome-2/login
sound and then hangs. I have run top in the background and redirected
the output to a file while this happens. It has reveled that the
bonobo-activation-server starts up first. Then it and EsounD both go to
sleep, and the whole system goes 100.0% idle. I have no idea why this
should happen. Is there a trace I can run that will show me where the
problem lies? 

Thanks,

Geoff