Windows could not connect to the System Event Notification Service service.

Anonymous

Every so often, 1 in 50, my laptop is very slow to start-up I get the "Please Wait" before the login screen. Once I do log in I get the error:

"Failed to connect to a windows service.

Windows could not connect to the System Event Notification Service service. This problem prevents limited users from logging on to the system. As an administrative user, you can review the System Event Log for details about why the service didn't respond."

Aero seems to be disabled also and cannot be fixed without a restart. This problem is getting to be bothersome and I need to know if it could be hardware related. Thank you in advance for you help.

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Anonymous

This works!!!

Reset the Winsock Catalog

Open a Command Prompt as an Administrator.
Type “netsh winsock reset” (without quotes) and press Enter.
Restart the computer.

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Answer accepted by question author

Anonymous

Hello Tim Wilson, PMP,

Thank you for the response on this. Since you are on a domain with this issue, please repost this question at the link provided below at the Microsoft TechNet Forums.

Microsoft TechNet Forums:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-us/categories/

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Anonymous

Hi,

Since when are you facing this issue?

Did you make any software or hardware changes to the computer recently?

Check if the System Event Notification Service is running or not. To check for the services

1. Click on Start

2. In the start Search box type Services

3. Right Click on - RUN AS ADMIN

Check if the below mentioned services has the mentioned status and start up type.

System Event Notification Service Started Automatic

Also, check the dependency services that are required for System Restore Service to run.

To check that double click on the service and click on the dependency tab.

For the system being slow you may try to improve the performance by optimizing Windows and check if that helps. Follow the link given below on how to optimize Windows.

Optimize Windows 7 for better performance

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Optimize-Windows-7-for-better-performance

The aero issue can be resolved by installing or reinstalling the updated graphics card drivers. You may check if any update for the Graphics card is available for your computer from the computer manufacturer.

Refer to:****

Update a driver for hardware that isn't working properly

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Update-a-driver-for-hardware-that-isnt-working-properly

Update drivers: recommended links

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Update-drivers-recommended-links

Hope this information is helpful.

Amrita M

Microsoft Answers Support Engineer

Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

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178 additional answers

Anonymous

2011-11-09T10:43:20+00:00

Hey Paul,

that seems like a good research! And I think that you found the real solution as I remember to also have several unknown devices in the device manager. I did not consider those problems related as I did not remember to have installed all drivers after the latest re-install of windows...

I am eager to try the solution and will report my findings.

Best regards
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Anonymous

2011-11-09T00:06:42+00:00

I have been reading the issues here regarding the failure of the system event notification service. Recently I had a friend who asked me to take a look at his PC with the exact same issue; system event notification service failed to start, loss of Windows Aero theme and very slow boot times. After investigating I came to the conclusion that the problem was driver related (as has been alluded to in this thread).

On investigating Device Manager (Start, type dev m[anager]). Any problem devices will be highlighted with a warning symbol (). I found two devices that Windows reported as Unknown Devices and the properties dialogue reported that these devices had no driver installed. Attempting to update the drivers for these devices failed; since there were no drivers installed, the properties dialogue had no option to uninstall the devices; so, right click on the device as it appears in the Device Manager list and choose ‘Uninstall’. Do this for all devices that have a warning symbol. This cleared old device entries and the PC booted in a reasonable time (for windows!), Aero was working and no more ‘system event notification service’ errors.

I concluded from this that hardware had been removed from the PC, but that drivers, or registry entries had not been [efficiently] removed and so Windows assumed the hardware was still present, attempted to install drivers for the ‘ghost’ hardware at each boot and being unable to install a driver for a device that was not present assumed the device was there and had a problem, prevented related services from starting and this led to the issues described.

While this worked in this instance, I offer no guarantees it will work for you, neither do I accept responsibility if you follow my guidelines and render your system unusable.
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