gnome desktop crashing!

hi friends,

I used gconftool-2 to first shutdown the gconfd and then made changed
to the applet id list to add an applet to the panel on startup........
however when i do this form the root and rebbot thje machine
again.........the desktop goes haywire .Its completely destroyed.cant
see anything but some gray and black and red patches (which look like
a part of some error messages also!!) as if its hanged.

could some1 shed some light on why its happening!
i'm using redhat.

thanx,
Richa