xfdesktop not loading or overrun by Gnome

[Paul M. Bucalo]

Just recently I noticed one of my WBEL boxes running XFce 4.2 doing
something strange and so far irreversible. I noticed that right after
xfce-panel is loaded by the session manager, it loads up
evolution-alarm-notify. Then the session background is replaced with the
Gnome desktop with icons. If I kill the desktop background and run
xfdesktop, I get my desktop sans right-click menu. It most likely is a
Gnome problem, but I can't seem to figure out where to find the
solution. I used the gconf editor to uncheck any references to nautilus
controlling the desktop. I tried using KDM instead of GDM. I tried
killing the Gnome desktop, starting up xfdesktop and then saving the
session. Nothing works! Any ideas or suggestions?

TIA,

Paul