task bar shows ???

[Patrick Lane <patrick m lane csun edu>]

I'm running Debian (potato), kernel 2.4.8, xf86 4.1.0, Ximian 1.4

Whenever I open a new application, instead of showing the application's 
name at the bottom on the task bar, it shows "???". This happened 
before. It didn't get fixed until a reformat a week or so later. I 
hadn't seen it since, was hoping it was a one time thing. I had to 
reformat again (I'm always screwing something up beyond repair). I was 
wondering if anyone knows how to get rid of these ugly 
????????????????????????????????????????????. It's enough to make me do 
something crazy like reformat [=.

--Patrick Lane