Comment 4 for bug 285843

I'm also getting the same issue.
This is on Ubuntu 8.10 with all updates.
When changing the resolution the gtk theme changes.
When I try to change the appearance, the first time from System->Preferences->Appearance i get an error message saying "couldn't start gnome-settings-daemon ..." The second time I run the appearance program it fixes the problem.
So as soon as you change the screen resolution gnome-settings gets killed and that's why the theme gets set to the default gtk theme. I hope that would help solve the problem.