I'm also getting the same error with an i7 CPU and and SSD. As suggested in the thread above, I killed and restarted gnome-settings-daemon, which restored the panel theme. However, changing the theme in the Appearance window would not change the skin for the panel. As you can see, the rest of the theming is messed up as well. After a reinstall, it seemed like I could avoid the bug by not installing the fglrx drivers for my Radeon card, but after a while, the bug showed up anyway. May try installing to a new partition on a mechanical drive in the next few days just to see what happens.
** Attachment added: "After restarting gnome-settings-daemon" https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-settings-daemon/+bug/574296/+attachment/1766551/+files/Screenshot.png -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Desktop Bugs, which is subscribed to gnome-settings-daemon in ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/574296 Title: Gnome theme not applied on session start -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
