hmm - to be honest - i dont understand the reason to rape a harmless lxde installation to be kde 
if one want a siduction kde, one should install a siduction-kde, otherwise there is a high chance to get a system that is not maintainable with a decent amount of support
in such cases i often think to myself: it isn't siduction so why should i support it?
Sure, I understand your point to an extent. At the time of the install I loved LXDE for a lightweight environment. I spent alot of time setting up NFS/webdav/Samba/Flexget/Plex and a number of other programs. Over time, I heard good things about KDE, which I liked back at 3.5 and decided I'd give it a try again. I liked it so much, I decided I'd run it instead of LXDE as I was using the machine more frequently as a desktop machine instead of just a file server. And I successfully ran that for around 2 years as KDE without any problems. I didn't even make any KDE changes recently that should be related.
In reality, I may have jumped to the wrong conclusion about what the real problem is. The KDE actually logs in and lets me interact with my desktop, HOWEVER applications are not being decorated (missing the close/Minimize/Maximize buttons) and when I went in to reenable those in the system settings they were gone . In doing my own research, people recommended resintalling KWIN which brought me to this point. The real answer could, in retrospect be alot easier than all that I've tried.
And sure, I could back up all my config and install default KDE and i'm sure that would fix my problem. It would also prevent me from learning what went wrong and also providing that to the community if it were to ever contribute directly to their experience or indirectly through any knowledge I had gained.
Thanks!
