Many questions

I have set up Kubuntu (finally KDE on Ubuntu!) on a rather old laptop. 
So far things are working alright, but there are a lot of minor issues 
that I hope people can help me resolve. However, I am only going to post 
 the most major issue for now. And that is....
If I need to make some changes in Control Center and I am asked to enter 
my password, all it does is take my password and then go to this 
introductory KDE Control Center page. Even if I return to the section I 
wished to make changes to, again it is not in administrative mode and I 
can't change anything.
Now I did activate root on this computer. However, root's password also 
produces no results. I have a suspicion this problem has something to do 
with dcopserver, but what can I do?
Thanks!

Curtis