Group Policy Client problem!

Anyone know why I get this error (pop-up window in system tray) every time I
boot Vista Business 32bit?

"Cannot connect to Group Policy Client service ".

I am on a domain, logging in as administrator and the computer/network
otherwise works perfectly. This started several months ago, and I cannot
find a restore point to go back to before then.

If I start up services.msi, Group Services Client is not running, and all
options to start , stop it etc are grey'd out?

I have googled and searched for hours and cannot find anything on this
error. A Vista reinstall for this laptop would be a huge undertaking. Any
have ANY ideas (I am even tempted to pay $59 for MS Support but not sure how
useful it will be?)

Here is Event Log data:

Reason: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a
timely fashion.
Details:

[ Name] Service Control Manager
[ Guid] {555908D1-A6D7-4695-8E1E-26931D2012F4}
[ EventSourceName] Service Control Manager
- EventID 7000
[ Qualifiers] 49152

Version 0
Level 2
Task 0
Opcode 0

Keywords 0x80000000000000

- TimeCreated
[ SystemTime] 2008-07-23T01:39:42.000Z

EventRecordID 46478
Correlation
- Execution
[ ProcessID] 0
[ ThreadID] 0

Channel System
Computer SEN006.Sen.local

Security

- EventData

param1 Group Policy Client
param2 %%1053

Interesting. You haven't made any changes to that service, have you
such as changing the account it runs under? It should be running a
LocalSystem so that would be something to check. Normally that servic
is hardened such that it cannot be stopped at all by a regula
administrator

--
gpoguy