kdesktop signal 11

greets!

this should be, I hope, a simple repair. I was trying to upgrade TDE based on squeeze, had some problems and have ended up with a corrupt desktop.

I can log into KDE, the desktop gets populated with background and kicker, wicd, etc but there is a great big error panel in the center which says " kdesktop crashed" and tosses signal 11. (it used to toss signal 6 but seems over that now.)

I cannot start any terminal apps within kde though I can alt + Fn.

I can start other apps but borders of the windows are not fully drawn. obviously KDE is unstable.

looking for suggestions. google yields nothing.

F.