How does a home user fix a broken DBUS ?

[Rod Butcher]

Greetings from sunny Sydney. I've been using Linux for a few years at 
home and got used to upgrading to a new release of Gnome and KDE by 
compiling all the sources. Never had a problem.
Since Gnome started using DBUS I've had lots of problems - a lot of the 
functionality now reliant on DBUS is now broken on my box. I have 
installed DBUS and it's running.
Example of errors : "Failed to connect to socket 
/var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: Connection refused"
I'm not trying to blame DBUS or Gnome. But what I'm trying to find is an 
"Idiot's guide to DBUS" and how the home user can help himself when he 
breaks DBUS (i.e. what needs to exist where for apps to hang together). 
I've looked at the DBUS doco on freedesktop.org but it's over my head. 
Is there such "amateur sysadmin" documentation ? Because it seems to me 
that with so many programs now using DBUS, if it breaks the desktop is 
broken.
Thanks for any pointers to documentation.
Rod
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