Window Chopped Off in GNOME openSUSE 11.3

Hi everyone,

First post here and I need some help with my new openSUSE installation. Actually, I'm not sure whether this is a GNOME problem or an openSUSE problem, but I've installed several other GNOME-based distributions recently without this happening. I've been trying to post to the forums at opensuse.org and for some reason have been unable to access them for the last 24 hours, so I hope someone here can help.

When I installed openSUSE 11.1 a few months ago, it went very smoothly. Unfortunately, I haven't had the same experience with 11.3. I've seen a variety of problems, but have been unable to deal with the others because this one makes it so difficult to work in the environment.

The first time I booted the new installation, an error message popped up at the top of the screen but I was unable to read it nor was I able to find any buttons to respond to it. I quickly found that every window on the desktop is cut off at the top. I never have a title bar, so the only way to maximize/minimize or close a window is by right clicking on the panel icon. I sometimes also lose crucial information at the top, as with the first error message I saw.

It doesn't seem to matter what I set for the screen resolution, and I have tried several other settings that had no effect. I posted to one of the IRC channels and someone suggested I update the software, so I installed 100 (!) updates (it took forever), but to no avail.

Can someone tell me what's going on here? What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance....