Fresh Installation Of FreeBSD 11.2--Mate Not Working Properly

[B J]

Since the HD on which I installed the system is about as old as the
computer, I thought that it might have been going wobbly.

I made a fresh installation on an external unit and ran Mate through
xterm.  There doesn't appear to be any difference between that and
what I have on the main drive.  In the fresh installation, I can drag
and place windows, but it's slow.  In addition, I'm getting the same
error messages as I did earlier.

It would seem, then, that something somewhere got fiddled between when
I installed the original system on the HD and now.  Maybe I should
look at using a new desktop.  KDE, maybe?

BMJ