Taxes are problematic, but this is ridiculous.

February 7, 2011 4:56 AM

Help me get rid of the "Windows Could not Connect to the System events notification service" error. (Warning - you will need to dumb down your answers a little.)

The details: Windows 7, 64 Bit. Using Google Chrome for the browser.

Downloaded Turbo Tax last night and did my taxes, but had a hell of a lot of problems with it -- it froze up three times. I did manage to get my return filed, then saved the return itself (I plan to send it to a friend to print for me) and uninstalled Turbo Tax and shut down.

Then the next time I logged on, a certain point of the logon sequence took much longer than usual (the typical logon is: "Starting windows" screen, a fade to black, then a "please wait" screen for a second followed by a "welcome" screen, then another fade to black, then my desktop. The "please wait" hung around much longer than usual), and I got a popup error message once everything was up and running reading that "Windows could not connect to the System Event Notification Service service." I can use my computer fine, but the display looks a little different and the battery life also seems to have plummeted (it used to be 3 hours on a full battery, now it's only one and a half).

I tried the "netsh winsock reset" fix suggested in this thread, but it didn't work.

Now what I mean by "you will need to dumb down your answers a little" -- I've had people in the past offer me suggestions by saying things like "run a rootkit scan," but I don't know what that means. But I'm not "check your power is turned on" either. If someone offering me that kind of suggestion could also direct me HOW to do a rootkit scan and why I'm doing it, that's all I need to know.

Help?

posted by EmpressCallipygos to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Best answer: I'm not a Windows person, so I don't know the step-by-step actions involved, but there is a way in Windows 7 to roll back the computer to it's state before an update. I would try rolling the system back one update. That should eliminate whatever crud Turbo Tax may have left on your system. See here.
posted by COD at 5:41 AM on February 7, 2011

I found some decent solutions on Microsoft's website. Here are their suggestions:

First Make sure your file system is not corrupt, and then that your user account is not corrupt, with links on how to do both

Second Go to your services and make sure System Event Notification Service is running on Automatic. The second part here, with the winsock command, I saw on some other answers also. Some of those said that Aero was not running - is that the problem with your display?

Good luck
posted by I am the Walrus at 6:23 AM on February 7, 2011

Response by poster: COD: I poked around online at work and saw people suggest a system restore; I was going to try that just now.

Walrus: I have no clue about Aero. How would I be able to tell htat?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:48 PM on February 7, 2011

Response by poster: This just in -- doing a System Restore seems to have done the trick. Huzzah!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:14 PM on February 7, 2011