gconf trouble/nautilus failure

["Ian T." <itschaotic yahoo ca>]

et all.
  
The output of asking for 'nautilus' at the command line has a lot of messages 
like the one below.
=====================	
Eel-WARNING **: GConf error:
  No database available to save your configuration:
 Unable to store a value at key 
'/apps/nautilus/defaults/novice/apps/nautilus/preferences/can_add_content', 
as the configuration server has no writeable databases. There are two common 
causes of this problem: 1) your configuration path file doesn't contain any 
databases or wasn't found or 2) OAF mistakenly created two gconfd processes. 
If you have two gconfd processes (or had two at the time the second was 
launched), then it's an OAF bug, not a GConf issue. Logging out, killing oafd 
and gconfd, and logging back in may help. As always, check the user.* syslog 
for details on problems gconfd encountered.
=====================
I wouldn't know a data base if it kicked me..;*)  so I'm at a loss as to 
where to be looking for or recreating a 'writeable database'.  

'ps -aux' shows no duplication of 'gconfd processes'  In fact there shows no 
gconfd running at all.  I can start something like that with /usr/bin/gonfd-1 
but it makes no difference to nautilus.

'oafd' is running and is noted like this: 'oafd --ac-activate --ior-out'
====================
 I can't gain access to the directories below without getting these messages:
"/file '1' exists but can not be stat-ed: Input/output error" 
"/file 'schemas' exists but can not be stat-ed: Input/output error" 
"/file 'gconf.xml.mandatory' exists but can not be stat-ed: Input/output 
error"

[root localhost Ian]# find /etc -name 'gconf'
/etc/gconf
find: /etc/gconf/1: Input/output error
find: /etc/gconf/schemas: Input/output error
find: /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory: Input/output error
===================
If someone would be so kind as to point me to the documentation I should be 
reading or any other helpful resources.... I'd sure be grateful for the help. 
 
The weary newbie... Ian

-- 
If you need to reach me, please remove the "BOGUS" in my return address.