Ubuntu :: Bottom Panel Of Desktop Went Haywire?

My computer freaked out, and started opening new windows in the bottom panel by the thousands. The windows didn't open in the main desktop, but the bottom panel filled up with new window icons and kept filling so fast the whole panel became a slithering, pulsing mass of rapidly opening window icons that compressed to the max to fit in the panel. I opened system monitor and both my CPU cores were at nearly 100%. I ran top anda process called something like "gnome-panel" was at the top of the list with over 50% CPU usage. I ran kill on the PID of that process, and got a bunch of funky popup error messages about the panel reloading (never seen that before), and I was able to finally get the panel to clear out. Now nothing shows up in the bottom panel even when I open a window for Firefox, or open a folder on the desktop. I know there are still open windows, but they don't show up in the bottom panel. Even after restarting the computer nothing shows in the bottom panel. Any ideas on what I killed and how to get the bottom panel back to normal?