Possible Duplicate:
How do I reset GNOME to the defaults?
Yesterday I had an issue with my 12.04 - https://askubuntu.com/questions/121957/12-04-does-anyone-know-how-to-fix-this-all-of-a-sudden-my-terminal-shortcut-d#comment145297_121957
and some configuration causing an issue with metacity making it crash - I was walked through the problem, and found out that by creating another user account and logging onto it - the problem wasn't present anymore on that account but still was present on my old account.
So my question is - was the problem just something in my old Home folder? - also - can most issues that occur like this be solved by making a new account and backing up the "Home" folder?
Your issue was found to be limited to a corrupt configuration file in your home as the new user account did not have the issue you were facing. It doesn't happen all the time. Problems might be from the software level (in other words, a bug in the software) which can't be fixed by creating a new user account.
It clearly is a problem with just the home folder (or more exactly, the configuration files) because the newer accounts are not affected.
You could have possibly fixed your problem by resetting your gnome-session to the defaults but it didn't strike me when I was trying to fix your problem. Try resetting GNOME to the defaults and see if that fixes the problem with your old user account.