panel crashed mysteriously overnight

["Jason Hogan-O'Neill" <hon st3-3-3 tky hut fi>]

Hi all,

The other day I logged out of my nicely working windows session (did
ALT-CTRL-F1) and logged out ( I DID NOT turn off the PC - just left it
like that with the login prompt there). Logged back in the next day and
did 'startx' only to find thepanel would not start - 'panel crashed,
segmentation fault'. Was then asked 'do you want to stop this process' and
clicked yes. 

Logeed out, logged back in and same story. I also typed 'panel &' and
again no luck. I deleted all my .gnome file in ~/ logged out and logged
back in - same story. I even installed helix gnome and still no luck.

I have seen quite a few people with the same problem as me over the past
two months, posting the same problem (this is why I have subscribed to
this list). 

Please please please give me some help and tell em how you fixed it or how
I might go about fixing it.

Many thanks folks,

Jas