Nautilus doesn't show my desktop until I kill it

Something's wrong with nautilus. When I boot my computer and it logs in, Gnome shows, things are running, I can run programs and everything, but my desktop has no icons. I have to open a terminal and run killall nautilus and then suddenly everything works fine.

How can I diagnose and fix this? Or, as a last resort, how might I create a script that runs at startup to automatically kill and restart nautilus?

From ubuntu Ricket

• #!/bin/bash
  killall nautilus
  

  Would be your script. make sure you make it executable

  chmod +x nameofscript.sh
  

  all you would have to do is place the script in the start up sequence using.

  Systems > Preferences > Startup Applications.

  I would first wait on your next restart maybe it just take a bit longer.

  Ricket : Unfortunately it's not a matter of waiting, I've already given it all possible amounts of time. I've ignored it and just used the computer, and then gone back hours later to find my desktop is still not loaded; but after running killall nautilus, it takes a few seconds for the icons to appear. Even opening folders doesn't make the desktop appear, so nautilus acts fine in all other ways except for the desktop. It's a mystery!

  qbi : That is only a workaround, but does not resolve the problem.

  garbagecollector : @qbi I understand that he asked for a work around if i couldn't help. so that what i provided.

  Umang : I had the same problem when I upgraded to Lucid. I didn't fix it, I just started using Debian and was hoping to install Lucid side-by-side of Debian next month. If the problem still occurs, I'll report it then.
  From garbagecollector

• This is a known bug in GNOME affecting many distributions.

  See this bug report for details and workarounds.

  Ricket : That's perfect, thanks! I'll be trying those things when I get home tonight.
  From Richard Holloway