Ubuntu :: Top And Bottom System Trays - Desktop Icons Sometimes Missing At Boot

I am running Lucid Lynx 10.04.3. Sometimes when I boot the computer, my desktop icons are not there. I ended up looking for a solution, and found one:

1. Hit Alt-F2 and run gconf-editor

2. Go to apps/nautilus/preferences and check 'show_desktop'

However, show desktop was already checked. If I unchecked it, and then checked it again, the desktop icons appeared. Weird, but problem solved right? Wrong.

Sometimes when I boot, the desktop icons are gone again. This doesn't happen at every single boot though. When they are gone again though, I just have to go through the process again. Here's where it gets worse.

Also, sometimes at boot, both the top and bottom taskbars/system trays are completely gone, leaving just the desktop. Once again, this doesn't happen at every single boot. I can't really do anything, so I just reboot again and more often then not, things are back to normal. Or the trays are back, but the desktop icons are gone again.

The weird thing about this is it doesn't happen every time I boot the computer. So if there is a problem I just restart and things are usually fine again. However this is very frustrating, and NOT normal.

Also, because the default drivers for my NVIDIA GeForce MX4000 were not sufficient, I had to remove the Nouveau drivers and install nvidia-glx-96, which corresponds to the official NVIDIA Linux driver version 96.43.17. This is the latest driver version listed for my card on the NVIDIA website. I also had to downgrade from 11.04 because apparently the old drivers are not compatible with the new X Server version in 11.04. I don't know if this has anything to do with it or not. I'm wondering if maybe i should just get a newer card so I don't have to deal with the older drivers.