One of my computers is running Windows Vista very happily when all of a sudden yesterday, when trying to access the Control Panel, I got a pop-up message that gave a code and said, “RPC Server Unavailable”. I couldn’t get into Control Panel. After searching the net for a solution, I found some, but none of them worked for me.

One person said that RPC was not listed when they went to services.msc. Mine was listed. Another said to find RPC in the services.msc and “start” it. The problem with that fix was that mine *was* started, and when I went into properties, I couldn’t stop it or even change it.

Eventually I gave up and restored my computer to a few days ago. That didn’t work, either. Hmm… Well, I had (luckily) made a backup of my machine right before the new year and tried that, since I knew that one was working. Ah-HAH!

As soon as my restored machine booted up, it wanted me to install an update:

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile for Windows Vista x86 (KB982670)

I almost always install updates, and I remember installing that one. I think I found the culprit. The RPC Server unavailable message doesn’t come up now. I will hold off on installing that update to see if it was the problem.