nautilus broken for user account but not root

[Ben Vitale <bsvitale comcast net>]

Hi,
  My system locked up today and upon restart, nautilus no longer works. 
I see no desktop icons at all, and I can't bring up the right-click menu
on my desktop.  Changing the desktop background via preferences has no
effect, and "Browse Filesystem" does nothing.. even though the nautilus
process is running..

But this is only a problem on the user account which was logged in when
the crash took place.  When logging into GNOME as root, everything
functions properly.

Is there a way I can restore whatever got trashed??

Thanks-
Ben