Well, all KDE programs are not working. Kcontrol gives some terminal output. I hope this makes sense to someone! 20:53 joss:~ $ kcontrol DCOPServer up and running. kio (KDirWatch): KDirWatch: Can't use FAM kio (KDirWatch): KDirWatch: Can't use FAM kded: Does not exist! (/home/joss/.kde2/share/servicetypes/) kio (KLauncher): KLauncher: Got kdeinit_exec_wait('kbuildsycoca', ...) kio (KLauncher): kbuildsycoca (pid 1821) up and running. kbuildsycoca: Recreating ksycoca file kbuildsycoca: Database is up to date DCOP aborting call from 'anonymous-1819' to 'kded' ERROR: KUniqueApplication: DCOP communication error! DCOP aborting call from 'anonymous-1809' to 'kcontrol' ERROR: KUniqueApplication: DCOP communication error! 20:53 joss:~ $ klauncher: KLauncher::process ---> terminateKDE kdeinit: Fatal IO error: client killed kdeinit: sending SIGHUP to children. kdeinit: sending SIGTERM to children. kdeinit: Exit. any ideas? Thanks Joss --