Windows Host Service (Rundll32) has stopped working.

[Danny McCormick]

I can not access my playback devices by right clicking the speaker icon in
the taskbar, start World of WarCraft, access Folder Options or Playback
devices from the Control Panel and a slew of other things without the error
message"Windows Host Service (Rundll32) has stopped working" popping up.
The program or task never starts up either.
I've tried the view icons work around and that has not helped.
I disabled NTune and that allowed me to access Folder Options from the
Control Panel for about 5 minutes before it stopped working again.
The rundll32 file I have is 43.5KB /44KB on disk.
I purchased Vista Home Premium through Windows Onlne Purchase Program, so I
don't have a disk to grab the file from.
I'm afraid to try and reinstall Vista for fear of losing all my stuff and
would like that to be my last resort.
I've scanned for viruses and spyware and seem to be clean, but this error
message keeps popping up and stops legitimate programs from working.
I have emailed Microsoft about the problem and am waiting for a response.
I am not sure when the problem started as I have been out of the country for
the last 3 months and my wife has been using the computer and complaining
about it not working.
I believe the problem started when i installed Vista's SP1 though.
Any suggestion on how to repair this or get a new rundll32 file to replace
te one I have?
Thanks.

 

[Danny McCormick]

Well I deleted Windows Vista SP1 and all seems to be working correctly now.
I also turned off automatic updates so SP1 doesn't install itself again.

 

[Danny McCormick]

I turned windows automatic update to manual so i will still be notified of
new updates, but I hid the SP1 update so that it doesn't keep telling me to
download it.

Since uninstalling SP1, I have had no problems at all with Vista.