Comment 6 for bug 29061

Ok, I've fixed the problem for myself, but probably not the bug itself.

After a bit of googling, I found that some others were also having the same problem with GNOME. Running this command fixed the issue to an extent:

$ sudo gconf-schemas --register desktop_gnome_interface.schemas

The interface schemas were indeed missing, and that fixed the icons issue. I was also unable to launch the Theme manager before that, now I can.

I also found out that re-installing the package "libgnome2-common" would make things work, so I did that and it all seems to be fine.

Guess I'll close this bug for now, though it might happen to others in future - who knows ;-)