Comment 28 for bug 218070

on hardy I added the following to /etc/rc.local, which did the trick. Replace <USERNAME> with your user name. Be warned it's possible it might delete some settings that you like so take a copy of .nautilus first!

find ~<USERNAME>/.nautilus -type f ! -name 'file:%2F%2F%2Fhome%2F<USERNAME>%2FDesktop.xml' | xargs rm