kopete can't talk to my kwallet

I've got another question. Again, my home system works well and my laptop has trouble. Both run kde 3.5 on Ubuntu. The desktop is 64 bit and the laptop 32 bit. When kopete starts on my laptop is can't connect to kwallet. It prompts for passwords, then says that it can't save them securely. This happens every time I log in. On my desktop, kopete connects to kwallet fine. I get prompted once for the kwallet password, and never again. I don't even know where to start looking for the problem. Michael