From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.9) Gecko/20020513 Description of problem: I've got a Dell Latitude CPx. Did a fresh install of 7.3 formating all partitions. Booting into run level 5. When I log in as either a user or as root the first time, panel dies, and doesn't restart. Trying to start it manually cause applets to die off of it. Hitting Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to restart X. Log in again and everything works fine. When I reboot the laptop I have to repeat the steps again. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Login using gnome 2. panel will crash 3. press CTRL+ALT+Backspace 4. Login in again and panel will work Additional info:
Probably the same as bug 55119, you might look at the comments there and see if you can note any similarities to your setup (beyond "Dell laptop" of course) or come up with other thoughts.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 55119 ***