Mazda, do you have any ideas at this point or have you noticed yourself that system settings are not sticking. It's happening to me with 1.7.5 and 1.7, and it sounds like a lot of people have started having the same issue.
I was able to modify most system settings this time around, until activating and setting the default keyboard started giving me problems. I had to freeze ICS keyboard and reboot to be able to change default. Modifying rotation settings not sticking. Adjusting brightness through menu, power control widget, and slide on status bar not sticking. Turning on photo sync in Google+ not sticking, immediately switches back to off (I suspect because even though this is in app, it is directly linked to "Accounts and sync" settings). Changing battery style not sticking. Basically, any system settings stop sticking.
Most of these settings will stick if you change them and then reboot. But some (like the keyboard settings) simply would not stick, regardless. And rebooting to adjust brightness is not really practical. This is on a totally clean install, and the ROM otherwise runs flawlessly, absolutely no other problems.
And please don't take this as whining or complaining
. I love the ROM and you're doing some really awesome stuff, but based upon my experiences with 1.7 and 1.7.5, and the comments of several others a few pages back, I really think something is up here that warrants looking into. Let me know what I can do to help (flashing tests, providing more details, experimenting with something, etc.)