xfce4.2 freezes

[Scott Horowitz]

I don't know if I should be posting this here or on my distro's mailing
list.. but basically, I rebooted and now xfce freezes when starting up.
It had been working just fine until today. I use startxfce4, 
xfce-session starts, I see the session splash - and then it gets to 
"Loading desktop settings" and it's dead. Although the cpu is definitely 
doing something because my laptop fan goes into its highest speed.. but 
I've let it work for 5+ minutes with no activity. And I can't 
ctl-alt-backspace or anything, I have to physically restart.

I've deleting my .cache, I'm renamed my .config to .config.bak, I've
uninstalled and reinstalled the Xfce4 group, and I'm still in the same
situation.

I've also tried replacing startxfce4 with:
exec xfdesktop
and that seems to work (unless xfdesktop is supposed to give me a 
background or a right-click? because I don't get those but I can 
ctrl-alt-backspace out of X)

If I instead use:
xftaskbar4 &
exec xfdesktop
I get a blank taskbar at the top and then it's again frozen. Have to 
physically restart.

Any ideas? How can I diagnose this problem? Thanks in advance..

-- 
-Scott Horowitz
http://www.theskyiscrape.com