can you look with snoopdos, if any message appear ?
AFA give messages if errors during load come.
AFA cant work with powericons.
AFA work with visual prefs and birdi on when no AFA skin is select.
to get AFA and visualprefs correct working, it is important that your startupsequence
IF NOT EXISTS ENV:afa/replacevisualprefs ;enables the following lines only if similar featrues are disabled in AfA_OS
.....visualprefs
.....traps
ENDIF
only then you can be sure Afa and visual prefs work always together and in afa_prefs you can chose if you want afa skin or visualprefs-birdie skin.