xfce no root window?

[Timothy Wood]

Hello,

I just installed xfce 3.8.18 on a Red Hat 7.2 machine (using RPMS) and I
changed my .xinitrc to read

exec /usr/bin/xfce

which is how I run it on my RH8.0 machine.  However when I start x I get
the drawer panel but nothing else.  The root window stays that
grey/white checker board, mouse clicks on the root window produce no
menus ( left right or middle buttons) and when I pop up a window it has
no border/titlebar and is stuck at (0,0). 

I thought maybe it had something to do with configuration files but no
dice there so I installed xfce4.  xfce4 fixed the third problem, with
the windows, but the root window problem still remains.

Any ideas?

Timothy,