Those of you who has problems with kcontrol can now try another tool that provides a similar functionality - systemsettings-kde3. Just install this package and find it in the menu.
Works fine, shows up in System > Configuration (easily movable to where "Personal Settings" sits now in Kmenu). Just one minor problem. Network Settings > Network Connection: "The specified library knetworkconfmodule could not be found ... The diagnostic is: Library files for "kcm_knetworkconfmodule.la" not found in path."
Neither the .so or .la file is in /opt/kde3/lib/kde3