panel disappears

[Eric Beversluis]

I'm having a strange effect on my home Desktop (doesn't happen with the
root desktop): 

Each time I log on, the top and bottom panels are empty. Random
experimentation revealed that if I rt click the empty panel, go to
properties and click 'Show hide buttons,' everything appears properly.
This is very strange, since the hide buttons don't empty the panel, they
close the whole panel. And the effect of returning my panel contents
happens regardless of which state the 'Show hide buttons' check box is
in--i.e., it's just toggling it that gets the strange but beneficial
result of returning the contents to the visible but empty panels.

EB