metacity / nautilus weirdness

[Chris Heywood <cheywood net2000 com au>]

hey... 

was wondering if anyone else gets this.  when I login to my gnome
session using metacity and nautilus (both latest releases) things seem
ok. 

but when I go to open a directory off the desktop, nautilus seems to
open up the directory (~/files) and ~ aswell (home = ~ here).  then
nautilus seems to crash (the desktop flashes/redraws) yet the windows
appear to remain open.

then metacity crashes, and that's the end of the story.  at least
nautilus respawns though.  not sure what's going on. 

any ideas?  I have to recover every login by opening up metacity from a
console terminal.

(feel free to let me know if there's a more appropriate list for thing)

sawfish didn't have this problem.  although sawfish had problems with
other things... hence using metacity.

thanks for any help, 
chris