Panel keeps disappearing

[Christiane Tom <chtom colba net>]

First, my appologies if this question has already been asked and
answered - I did look through the list archive without finding a 
solution to my problem.

I'm running RedHat 6.0 on my computer, and as a user I'm 
running the Gnome desktop. I love it but I've been having a
problem with it - my panel keeps disappearing... it's the second
time now, I log on and my desktop comes on, but without any
panel. Sometimes I'll get a box that tells me that a panel is
already running, do I want to start a second one (and no matter
if I say yes or no, I still don't get my panel back) but usually 
there's no error message. The first time it happened, I ended up
deleting the user, then going back in root and creating a new user,
then configuring my panel again. This time I'm not sure *what* to
do, and I don't want to go through the matter of creating a new
user again if this problem is going to keep on happening.

Does anybody have a hint for me ?

Chris