The disappearing desktop panels

Hi There, This is now the second time, something strange has happened in relation to desktop panels. Firstly, in Gnome, my panel at the top of the screen which shows open applications has disappeared. Secondly, in XFCE, both the top panel and the bottom XFCE desktop panel have both disappeared. It's not a auto-hide thing as I looked there first. Now the only DE I have left that works properly is KDE. Please help -- SynapseR Suse 9.3