gnome panel problem

[AN]

I am having a problem with the bottom panel in Gnome2.32 on 8-stable 
amd64.  When a new program is started I do no get an icon on the bottom 
panel.  Without this I am unable to minimize a window, if you click on 
the minimize button the window goes away and there is no way to recover 
it.  I tried to make deinstall and make install clean in gnome-panel but 
it did not fix the problem.  Any one seeing this?  Any help is 
appreciated.

tia