Critical Windows Component Failure

[madhouserevival]

I have never seen this before. It happens every time I shutdown Windows and occasionally when I start up it will takes 5 minutes to finish loading and then this message will appear. SFC doesn't detect any errors. I even ran an in-place Windows "upgrade" to try and fix the missing component but the message still occurs. And of course I ran your AIO Repair. I have never seen this message before on any Windows installation and Google doesn't even show any results for it (no surprise there).  Really at my wits end here.  Any ideas, Shane? Thanks!

[Still_Game]

The wording and general presentation looks suspicious to me and, unless somebody else on this forum has a better explanation for this message, I would suspect some sort of malware or scareware. I would suggest you ensure you have a backup of your important data and then start a thread on either Malwarebytes or Bleeping Computers forums and get one of the experts there to run some controlled diagnostics on your system and take you through the appropriate repair steps if necessary.

https://forums.malwarebytes.com/forum/7-windows-malware-removal-help-support/

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/f/22/virus-trojan-spyware-and-malware-removal-logs/

Good luck.......

[Boggin]

I agree, it does look suspicious, but first, perform a clean boot should it be one of the items in your startup that is causing a conflict.

[madhouserevival]

Well, after running several rootkit scanners, malwayrebytes spyware scanner, Comodos scanners and EmsisoftEmergencyKit (which fixed the most problems though nothing that seemed critical) I discovered that it was Restore Point Creator that was producing the message. So it wasn't something serious. The dev reported in April that he's no longer developing the program:

With a heavy heart I have come to the conclusion that I’m going to discontinue this program. System Restore is just not reliable to use in case something does go wrong with your system. To keep supporting this program despite all of the issues that people have with System Restore I feel is a disservice to my users; they certainly deserve better.

I have fought with Microsoft System Restore for long enough and I’m just sick and tired of it. People have been reporting issues with System Restore not working for them and worst of all, System Restore not being able to restore a system back to a working state which makes System Restore completely unreliable for the purpose that it was made for.

At this point I recommend using Macrium Reflect, it’s a free solution for most people and will be guaranteed to be able to restore your system to a known working state. Yes, it takes a lot more effort than using System Restore since it requires you, the user, to create the disk images but it is far more reliable than System Restore and is 100% guaranteed to work every single time you need it to work.

I do have Reflect and use it a LOT. Thanks for the replies!

[Still_Game]

Glad that you've resolved the problem and it wasn't anything serious. For my part, I still create regular System Restore points in Windows 7, but don't rely on them. Like you, I uses a reliable backup program (Casper in my case) and also make regular Registry Backups using that element of Windows Repair All In One. Can't have too many backups!

Thanks for your feedback.

[Boggin]

Thanks for the update and that it wasn't anything serious.

While I also occasionally create restore points, I also rely on Macrium.