If the system user name has a space, it looks like the GUIminer.py's launch_solo_server event passes an incorrect datadir path for self.blockchain_directory and the bitcoin server complains of a missing directory even though the os.path.exists() check passes and GUIminer thinks it had launched okay.
Update: it looks like this fixes it (added branch in github):
datadir = " -datadir=\"%s\"" % self.blockchain_directory