Odd pauses; gconf in logs

[Jyrinx <jyrinx_list mindspring com>]

I'm running Ximian 1.4 on Red Hat 7.1. I keep getting odd pauses - five
to ten seconds long - when logging in or launching certain programs. The
things that pause seem to be the ones most closely related to GNOME -
the control panel, Ximian Evolution, and the audio mixer pause, but
Mozilla does not.

I took a peek at the trusty /var/log/messages and found this:

Dec 24 12:09:34 kryptonitespoon gconfd (jyrinx-944): starting (version
1.0.4), pid 944 user 'jyrinx'
Dec 24 12:09:34 kryptonitespoon gconfd (jyrinx-946): starting (version
1.0.4), pid 946 user 'jyrinx'
Dec 24 12:09:34 kryptonitespoon gconfd (jyrinx-944): Removing stale lock
`/home/jyrinx/.gconfd/lock' because of error pinging server:
IDL:CORBA/COMM_FAILURE:1.0
Dec 24 12:09:34 kryptonitespoon gconfd (jyrinx-946): Removing stale lock
`/home/jyrinx/.gconfd/lock' because of error pinging server:
IDL:CORBA/COMM_FAILURE:1.0
Dec 24 12:09:34 kryptonitespoon gconfd (jyrinx-944): Failed to load
source `xml:readwrite:/home/jyrinx/.gconf': Failed to get a lock:  GConf
configuration daemon (gconfd) has lock
`/home/jyrinx/.gconf/%gconf-xml-backend.lock'
Dec 24 12:09:34 kryptonitespoon gconfd (jyrinx-944): No writable config
sources successfully resolved, may not be able to save some
configuration changes
Dec 24 12:09:34 kryptonitespoon gconfd (jyrinx-944): Another gconfd
already registered with OAF; exiting 

This is in the middle of the logon process. Seems like the sort of
screwy thing that could lead to things taking a while ... am I right?
Where do I go from here? Thanks!

Jyrinx
jyrinx_list at mindspring dot com