No System Notifications after desktop switch/back

[cryo_genie]

I've got an annoying problem with the KDE desktop after I switched to Gnome (to try it) and switched back. Thereafter I cannot get my KDE system notifications to work. I have tried all the available hardware engines but test fails to produce any sound and selected sound events fail to play. I can start and use amarok and it plays fine, and I can even set the engine under amarok to arts and it still plays OK so the artsd daemon seems to be running (can't say for sure, but kdesu -c artsd says its already running).
So what could have broken in KDE when I selected the gnome desktop? As far as I can tell, the KDE settings should have remained untouched.
Any ideas would be appreciated since I have no desire to re-install just to get system notifications working, but it annoys the hell out of me that they don't work! At the very least, what could I remove/re-emerge that might fix this problem? (Can I re-emerge KDE in entirety and fix this? If so- how?) Something tells me a simple config file is missing or changed - but that is sheer guesswork.

Thanks in advance for any help !

[aopisa]

I had a similar experience. Can't pinpoint what I changed, but all of a sudden System Notifications stopped working. Tried lots of different things I found on the forums and Google to no avail. Finally found that changing the player setting in Use External Player to 'mplayer' worked. Not the most elegant solution and it still bugs me that I can't use the KDE sound system. At least it keeps me from spending far too much time on a minor annoyance.

[xlnagla]

Try stopping kmilo, it's had a tendency to do this in the past... but I haven't heard of any troubles since the days of 3.3

~xlnagla

[cryo_genie]

Thanks, but it appears my problems have only gotten worse by trying to re-install KDE elements. Upon reboot my KDE is now completely hosed, with borderless windows that are partly off screen and unmoveable. I am backing up my important files with a gnome boot (at least it still works) and I appear to have no choice but to re-install. My own fault, but in absence of anything documented that I could find, I messed with re-emerging parts of KDE and must have gotten some incompatible versions mixed. (sh*t)

I would still like to know why switching desktops goes wrong. I have had other distros installed and used to use switchdesk with no ill effects whatsoever. I must confess this is the second time I've hosed sabayon by changing desktops, the same thing happened to me with 3.26.

(sigh) I'm tempted now to try another distro, but Sabayon seems to do the most things right. I gave Ubuntu 7.10 a try (briefly) but ran into the slow DVD read/write that many others have and that (for me) was a showstopper. At least I'm not tempted by Vista ... (ugh)