Please post what you have of your .profile, it will help to figure out why.
Here is a sample from one of my boxes.
PATH=/usr/sbin:/usr/localcw/sbin:$PATH:/sbin:
export PATH
Sometimes applications will require to modify the path and have an entry like this.
PATH=$PATH:$USERHOME/bin
export USERHOME
USERHOME contains the user's home directory
So that executable files in the Admin's home directory under sub directory bin will be seen by root's PATH variable.
