Garbled screen and freeze at GNOME login: related to dconf?

Since a recent system update (recent as in the last several months, but not entirely sure when it started)  I've been having issues logging on.  Gnome (or gnome shell?) appears to freeze up immediately after I enter my login and password. I can still use the mouse, but the desktop environment fails to load and the screen appears garbled.  The only clue I have as to the cause is this:  It doesn't happen to new users.  If I create a test user, the test user can log in fine, at least at first.  With my new test user, I can log in/out indefinitely until I make a configuration change in gnome.  If I go and change, say, the date/time settings and try to logon again, I get the freeze again.  I found that I get the freeze at every logon from then on until I delete the ~/.config directory, at which point my login works again, but of course my gnome settings are obliterated.   Investigating further, I did the following:
Created a test user
Logged in as test user
Made a copy of the ~/.config directory
Changed the date/time settings (changed time display from 24h to AM/PM)
Logged out
Attempted to log back in, and confirmed that gnome had in fact frozen
Switched tty, and made another copy of the ~/.config directory
diff'ed the two directories to find that .config/pulse/cookie and .config/dconf/user
After the above procedure, I guessed that dconf was the culprit (it being directly related to gnome) so I deleted the .config/dconf/user file and it restored my test user's ability to log in.  This is a binary file that I can't make any sense of, so my question is: what gives?  Has anyone experienced anything similar?  I thought it might be a permissions thing, but neither the permissions on the file or directory change between when the system is working and when it's hosed up.  Any thoughts?

/var/adm/messages

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