Created attachment 70253 [details] Screen shot that shows the change I have the pager widget on a vertical panel, configured as one column. Every now and then, without a clear trigger, when I log-in on my system I find that setting changed to four columns as you can see on the attached screen shot, so I need to change the setting again. This problem do not happens all the time, but sooner or later (more sooner than later) it happens.
I have the same problem using kde 4.7.4 on Debian wheezy, but with 9 desktops in 3 rows (3x3 grid). The configuration changes sometimes (very often) to 2 rows when i log in.
I see similar behavior (debian wheezy, kde 4.7.4, Dell E6410, Nvidia NVS3100M/nouveau), my pager is of 4 (vertical) x 1 (horizontal) dimension on a vertical panel at the left of the screen. Often the behavior is triggered by resolution changes (attaching an external moritor/projector). At the same time other scary things happen as the panel does not redraw properly when high resolution is restored, etc. I have seen all these effects also at earlier kde versions.
Since I switched to KDE SC 4.8.x (now, 4.8.3) some weeks ago, the problem did not happen again. Just in case I'm not closing this yet (I'll wait a bit more), but it seems fixed now.
Closing based on comment #3