Gnome Panel Crash

When it hapened--
I upgraded from redhat 7.2 to 8.0.  At the begining of the first session
after install I started to reconfigure the desktop. 

Step 1 Moving the panel from the bottom to left side. 

Step 2 The panel it was too wide for my tase so I checked hide panel.  

Step 3 Tested real player -- it stopped working on the second try. 

Step 4 Hit cntrl Alt backspace to escape X and kill whatever was hanging
real player. 

Step 5 Logged in again and the panel crashes multipal times on start up.

Potentially significant --
The panel only crashes on this user. It runs fine on the root desktop.

Output --
When I run gnome-panel from the command line I get the following:

[reed@localhost bin]$ gnome-panel
Unable to open desktop file applications:///Internet/redhat-email.desktop
for panel launcher: Err
or reading file 'applications:///Internet/redhat-email.desktop': File not found
Unable to open desktop file
applications:///Office/redhat-word-processor.desktop for panel launch
er: Error reading file
'applications:///Office/redhat-word-processor.desktop': File not found
Unable to open desktop file
applications:///Office/redhat-presentations.desktop for panel launche
r: Error reading file
'applications:///Office/redhat-presentations.desktop': File not found
Unable to open desktop file
applications:///Office/redhat-spreadsheet.desktop for panel launcher:
 Error reading file 'applications:///Office/redhat-spreadsheet.desktop':
File not found

system-tray-applet-ERROR **: file obox.c: line 107 (get_class): should not
be reached
aborting...

I will try to work around by creating a new user and leaving the panel
configuration alone.

Please help

Thanks

Reed