Problem with Gnome / wnck-applet

I've been having a problem with SuSE 10.0 when I login to Gnome. Usually (but not always), my panels appear but are completely empty. I right-click on the desktop, start a terminal window, run "top", and see that the process "wnck-applet" is getting 100% of the CPU usage. So I kill the process, and the login continues. The panels are populated with their normal menus/buttons/whatever. I also get a message that the window selector crashed and wants to know if I should restart it or delete it (I assume this is the wnck-applet applet). I choose restart, it appears, and I'm off and running as normal, with the window selector working as it should. Any suggestions on how to fix this? TIA! :-) - BS