GDK BadDrawable error on many gtk/gdk programs

["John F. Waymouth" <waymouth@wpi.edu>]

I'm running debian woody on 4+ compaq alphaserver DS10 machines, and seeing the
following type of error from many gdk programs.  This makes the machines all but
useless in X.  Here's an example from the program Gaim:

Gdk-ERROR **: BadDrawable (invalid Pixmap or Window parameter)
serial 12198 error_code 9 request_code 132 minor_code 1

This is very reproducible, just run pretty much any gtk/gdk program and use it
for a few seconds, and the error will appear and the program will crash.  It
usually doesn't take much more than a minute to happen, but I can't trace it
down to a specific action.  It seems random but common.

I'm a bit new to debian (just inheritted this lab full of alphas), so let me
know if any other diagnostics would be helpful, and how to get them (such as
package versions).  As far as I can tell, everything's up-to-date, I ran
dselect, and updated/installed.

I've seen this error floating around a few times before, but I've never found
any solution to it.  Is it just a debian thing, or is it an alpha/gdk thing?
Any help would be appreciated.