Having the same issue on a 12.04 laptop. I have a synergy client set to start up with the system; the behavior only appears while the machine is connected to the (Win7) synergy server. I can't seem to find a particular action that causes it either; and killing the synergy server (forcing the client to disconnect) doesn't stop the problem once it's started. Even killing gnome-settings-daemon doesn't fix it; it respawns seconds later and continues killing my CPU. Only fix I've found is to completely log out.
Having the same issue on a 12.04 laptop. I have a synergy client set to start up with the system; the behavior only appears while the machine is connected to the (Win7) synergy server. I can't seem to find a particular action that causes it either; and killing the synergy server (forcing the client to disconnect) doesn't stop the problem once it's started. Even killing gnome-settings- daemon doesn't fix it; it respawns seconds later and continues killing my CPU. Only fix I've found is to completely log out.