This condition is very annoying when it happens, and keeps all kinds of KDE things from working correctly. People have been known to reinstall the entire OS to get past the problem, which is totally unnecessary. The fix is simple (thanks to MadMan52 at Linuxforums):
Alt-F2 "dcopserver_shutdown" with no quote marks.
Alt-F2 "kdeinit" with no quote marks.
Alt-F2 "dcopserver_shutdown" with no quote marks.
Alt-F2 "kdeinit" with no quote marks.
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