Comment 19 for bug 139368

I seem to have exactly the same problem. It used to occur sporadically, now I get it on almost every log-in. Logging out and in again sometimes fixes it. This also effects the keyboard layout settings, and they can't be changed back. By now I know where all the keys are on the US layout, but it's still mildly annoying.

I see this is a 'new' bug, but I've already had this on Edgy. It only recently started to happen frequently.
Adding the sleep section to dbus seems to help. I will report back if it happens again.

The error message in Gnome is:

"There was an error starting the GNOME Settings Daemon.

Some things, such as themes, sounds, or background settings may not work correctly.

The last error message was:

Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.

GNOME will still try to restart the Settings Daemon next time you log in."