no icons on kde 3.4.2 desktop after reboot

[Paulo M C Aragão <yagpaulo-listas@yahoo.com>]

Hi,

I wonder if anyone has seen this problem and knows how to solve it.  
After a reboot, my KDE desktop shows no icons and a pop-up window shows 
the message:

Error - KDesktop
The process for the file protocol died unexpectedly

If I end the session and log in again, the icons appear.

I'm running KDE 3.4.2 on an up-to-date debian sid machine (kernel 
2.6.12-1-686). I use kdm and configured it to auto-login with my userid.

I didn't know what was the "file protocol" (from the error msg) and 
googled for:

kdesktop "file protocol"
kde "no icons"

but didn't hit anything that seemed relevant to this problem. The full 
error msg had no google hits at all.

I disabled auto-login, rebooted the machine, logged in manually, but hit 
exactly the same problem.

The impression I have is that whatever process sets up the icons on the 
desktop requires a process which is only started later, so that, when I 
end the session and log in again, it's then there, available.

I wasn't sure if I should post this on the kde list. I'll accept any 
suggestions.

Thanks for taking the time to read
Paulo