I have occasionally been receiving this error message on windows 7 laptop, is there anyway to stop it permanently? and what could be causing it?

 

 

 

It is one of those errors that may be caused by *almost everything*, from a given antivirus/firewall not running properly to a corrupted file or filesystem, just as an example a known culprit is BitDefender:

https://forum.bitdefender.com/index.php?/topic/75691-fixed-failed-to-connect-to-windows-service/

 

Unfortunately no way to know from just the message.

 

Clear the System Event Log (optionally saving it before clearing it) then re-start/re-boot the computer and if the error presents itself again examine it or post a copy of it inside a .zip or .7z archive.

Maybe with that data something more can be said about the possible causes.

More generally (including the possible cause of the antivirus/firewall) it is definitely a timing problem of some kind during startup, *something* slows down the start of this (or that) service and then *somehow* *somethng* times out, a similar issue is known (and in some cases solved) by running:

netsh winsock reset

but it doesn't necessarily applies to your case.

jaclaz