problem initializing system services with kde 3.1

[Chris <chris@force9.co.uk>]

Hi, I recently got a problem starting KDE. After I enter my username and 
password it hangs on "Initializing system services", then after one 
minute the screen becomes blank apart from the debian background 
display. Then almost exactly 5 mins later (I timed it) the KDE desktop 
appears as usual. At this point everthing seems to work fine.

My ~user/.xsession-errors file says:

startkde: Starting up...
QPixmap: Cannot create a QPixmap when no GUI is being used
QPixmap: Cannot create a QPixmap when no GUI is being used
QPixmap: Cannot create a QPixmap when no GUI is being used
QPixmap: Cannot create a QPixmap when no GUI is being used
kbuildsycoca running...
mcop warning: user defined signal handler found for SIG_PIPE, overriding
QFont::setPointSize: Point size <= 0 (-3)

I am using kdm, kde3.1, X packages installed from the testing dist and 
upgraded recently (though I had the prob before the upgrade too). I 
noticed that some people have had similar probs with kde2, but didn't 
manage to resolve them.
Any ideas??