KDE crashes for 1 user but not the others?

[Mike]

Greeting:

The system: FreeBSD 4.9-stable

I have KDE 3.14 installed and all was working well for a number of 
weeks. Root and one other regular user account had been able to start 
and use KDE and Gnome.  And both GUI environments operated normally.

A few days ago KDE under root account wouldn't start (startx).  Howevere 
KDE started under a regular user account works perfectly (and continues 
to do so).

Furthermore, Gnome (2.4) under root starts (half-way?) up to the point 
of the banner and then hangs.

Here is the error message produced by the KDE crash:

=== ERROR MESSAGE START ==========
Release Date: 27 February 2003
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0, Release 6.6
Build Operating System: FreeBSD 4.9 i386 [ELF]
Build Date: 07 October 2003
         Before reporting problems, check http://www.XFree86.Org/
         to make sure that you have the latest version.
Module Loader present
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
          (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
          (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: "/var/log/XFree86.0.log", Time: Fri Apr 16 11:12:49 2004
(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/XF86Config"
startkde: Starting up...
QPixmap: Cannot create a QPixmap when no GUI is being used
QPixmap: Cannot create a QPixmap when no GUI is being used
DCOP aborting call from 'anonymous-3839' to 'kded'
ERROR: Communication problem with kded, it probably crashed.
DCOP aborting call from 'anonymous-3842' to 'knotify'
ERROR: Communication problem with knotify, it probably crashed.
startkde: Shutting down...
KLauncher: Exiting on signal 1
startkde: Running shutdown scripts...
startkde: Done.
=== ERROR MESSAGE END ==========

Question:  There is just ONE install of KDE so,  how can this happen? 
Both user accounts start-up the "same" KDE right?

I've tried comparing the .kde and .kderc files between the user accounts 
but I can't find any diffences (or I don't know what to look for).

Any hints or suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Michael Chinn