No desktop

[Dave Martini 1]

I've got RHEL5 client and am authenticating against an NIS server.
I can log in as a user who has a username/password on the NIS server
but my gnome desktop is not complete. It only shows the my computer
icon, the home icon and the trash icon on the desktop. It doesn't show
the pull downs or icons at the very top menu bar of the page like 
Applications,
Places, System etc.
Any ideas why this would not show up?
Thank You.
Dave Martini
LLNL