panel goes missing after kernel upgrade

[Globe Trotter]

Hi,

I have a strange problem on my Dell Precision 650 running Fedora 9. I did a yum update (had to remove an ancient version of avahi which had decided to stick around at the last upgrade to Fedora 9 from Fedora 8 with rpm -e --noscripts avahi-0.6.17-1.fc7) and then I logged out and rebooted. After things came up, I do not have the xfce panel. How do I get this back? Any suggestions, please? I would not like to rebuild my panel from scratch. 

Sorry I am not very well-versed with xfce: just use it because it is neat and lightweight.

Many thanks and best wishes,
Trotter