I tried doing the Valgrind - hard though - the gnome-panel keeps re- spawning when I kill it. I've attached the logs from Valgrind - not sure if they are of any use though.
** Attachment added: "Valgrind Gnome panel" http://librarian.launchpad.net/6725813/valgrind-logs-gnome-panel.tar.gz -- [apport] gnome-panel crashed with SIGSEGV in g_str_equal() https://launchpad.net/bugs/90282 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs