Cannot start the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Service -- Error 5

Hi all,

My step brother has experienced a very nasty problem since yesterday. After
turning off the PC and letting windows do an update (from what I could
gather, it was the MPlayer 11 hotfix which we uninstalled to try to fix but
without results), he since cannot start the Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
service. He always gets an "Error 5: Access is Denied" error.

I've tried to search the itnernet and MS KB but didn't really find an
article describing the exact same problem. The *only* one I could find was
the following... (the solution was to reinstall, but that is the least
preferred solution for now for him)...

Here's the page that has the description of the same issue...

http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum....virus&tid=2398

Now, the differences with this fellow are...

When we try to start the Remote Procedure Call (RPC) in safe mode or normal
mode, we get the Error 5 Access is denied instead of his error which is Error
193.

Also, my Step brother's AV is Avast (we scanned the entire PC with a boot
scan thorough + archives) without any viruses found (also scanned for malware
with none found). -- Note that most of Avast cannot run due to the missing
RPC service once Windows is started.. luckily, it can still do the boot scan
:)

His Firewall is Zonealarm which is still running once Windows is up.

All other problems described in the message are the same (fast user
switching, checkdisk, Services extended tab blank but standard one working,
no more audio, only beeps etc).

Tried system restore but cannot run it because RPC isn't running :(

Now, I cannot physically reach my step brother atm so we tried to fix this
by phone, but so far I'm coming up blank except perhaps a reinstall (to
repair, not clean install) .. he's worried that he'll lose his users (his
wife, and childrens each have an account) and frankly, I'm not sure what will
happen either since this is the first time I've seen this error creep up.

Btw, his system is a Dell, with XP Home edition SP2.

Sorry for the long post (and long message included).. hope anyone can
provide hints/solutions to fix this :)

Thanks in advance..

--
Rej

P.S. I've found this MS article which I'll try tomorrow to see if it works,
but the error described in the article isn't the same, so I'm posting here to
try to find other solutions in the meantime.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;838428