Gnome Dbus error when starting Thunderbird

opensuse v12.1
linux 3.1.0-1.2-desktop x86_64
Thunderbird v8.0
Gnome v3.2.1

After updating the OS to 12.1 from 11.4 this error pops up whenever I start TB. Only this one application causes the error.

An error occurred while loading or saving configuration information for thunderbird-bin.
Some of your configuration settings may not work properly.

Failed to contact configuration server; the most common cause is a 
missing or misconfigured D-Bus session bus daemon. 
See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. 
(Details -  1: GetIOR failed: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMethod: 
Method "GetIOR" with signature "" on interface "org.gnome.GConf" doesn't exist)