I was being affected by this bug, comment #68 has seemingly fixed the issue for me.
System Details: ASROCK P55 Pro Motherboard Intel Core i7 860 @2.8Ghz 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz RAM nVidia Geforce GTS250 1GB Crucial C300 64GB linked through Startech SATA-III 6Gbps Card Wester Digital 320GB SATA-II Hope this helps. -- 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/649809 Title: Meerkat (10.10) does not apply theme properly -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs