Comment 14 for bug 344343

What worked for me was to change the background image to a smaller file, and not selecting the "tile effect" either - I noticed after booting that my theme would unload as my background loaded, This fixed the problem of my themes not loading after boot which I'm assuming also caused the problem with switching or installing them after boot. If the theme loads correctly it can later changed, if not it cannot, maybe this helps, I have tried everything written here before i figured this out on my own machine. -- As soon as I load a tiled background picture it happens all over again once i boot, bug?

Dual monitor boot, amd 64 bit chip, ati video card, ubuntu 10.04.