This is usually some sort of permissions problem. If you ran Gnome for
the first time while you were root, perhaps root owns the .gnome files?
I suggest you become root and execute this command:
# chown -R wayneb:user /home/wayneb
(Of course, if your Linux user name is something else, change "wayneb"
above to your Linux user name.)
This will change your home directory, and every file in it, to be owned
by you.
A simpler, and more drastic, way to fix it is to become root and delete
all the .gnome and .sawfish stuff, then be sure to log in as yourself
before you run Gnome again. This will force all the files to be
re-created with default settings, and you should own them correctly.
Good luck!