KDE suddenly turns to syrup

[David Liontooth]

At some point in the last couple of days KDE has slowed down 
dramatically. The loading is stuck at "Initializing system services" for 
ages, and the icons take about a minute to appear. The harddrive is not 
churning, just sitting there waiting for something.

orth had a solution to this kind of problem -- rebuilding something. 
Anyone have a suggestion?

KDE 3.1.5 with the most recent XFree 4.3.0.2 -- it might be the latter 
that's the culprit?

Cheers,
David