Gnome has no menu

[chrisstankevitz]

Hi, I just installed GNOME by adding USE flags gnome gtk -kde -qt; emerge --newuse world; emerge gnome

When I startx from user chris, GNOME "starts" but it has no menu on the top, no clock, nothing but a desktop with Computer and Trash icons. There is a little rectangle (panel?) but it is blank.

When I startx from other users (e.g. root or "useradd -m test") it looks fine.

I even tried
rm -rf /home/chris/.* /home/chris/*
cp /etc/skel/.* /home/chris; chown chris:users /home/chris/.*

What gives?

Thanks,

Chris