Intro and request for help

[alanr stateind com]

Hello,

	Before I ask for help, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Alan and I'm a recent Linux/GNOME convert. I am a programmer/analyst and for the last few years I've been developing in-house Windoze apps with Visual Basic. I am looking forward to getting back to my C programming roots and developing some GNOME apps once I get comfortable with the OS and the tools. 

	Now for my problem. I have been trying out different C IDE's and was in the process of compiling gIDE from a tarball when GNOME blew chunks on me and restarted. After I logged back in, Almost all of the menu items were gone, the arrows at each end of the bar were asterisks and didn't function, the time applet was missing, and the pager was missing. Let me clarify that last part because, as I said, I'm new to Linux/X/GNOME and I'm guessing at what the 'pager' is. The area where you can select desktops is missing, minimized applications do not appear, and those two buttons are missing. Since they're missing, I can't remember what they were!

	Anyway, after re-installing all of the GNOME RPMs I could find (I'm using RedHat 6), I've managed to get all of the menu items replaced and the arrows are back and functioning. However, the other stuff is still missing. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

TIA,
Alan Reynolds
areynolds@geocities.com