Plasma starting crashing on launch

[pkaplan1 at comcast.net]

In the last 24 hours something happened to my 8.10 system running kde 4.2.1. 
Whenever I login I get an error that plasma has crashed. All I see is a blank desktop. I can run apps from krunner, but no panels, cashews, plasmoids or right-clicking. 

Backtrace shows nothing. Replacing ~/.kde doesn't help. Logging in as a different user doesn't help 

Has anyone else experienced this? Is it due to a rogue package upgrade? 

Any thoughts on fixing other than reinstalling 8.10? 

TIA 
Paul 
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