gnome will not start after stupid mistake

[Steven Taetzsch <taetzsch asic-alliance com>]

I made the dumb mistake of changing my user ID while running gnome. I
su'd and ran linuxconf to change my user ID to be the same as my unix
account. When I exited out of gnome, it couldn't save whatever files it
needed. Now, when I try to start the panel I get:

* ERROR **: file orbitgtk.c: line 194 (_gnorba_cookie_setup): assertion
failed: (_gnorba_request_cookie._buffer &&
*_gnorba_request_cookie._buffer)
aborting...
Aborted (core dumped)

I have deleted my .gnome and .gnome-private directories. I have
re-installed all of the gnome rpms, but I still can't start up gnome. I
even removed myself as a user of the system and deleted my home
directory, then added me as a user again!

KDE starts up, but not gnome.

Please help. I'm trying to convert people here from NT to linux.

Thanks,
Steve