Windows Imaging Components - MSI errors

Running win7 64 bit.
I had a system crash several days ago. Brought on by my tinkering with a software called 'Virtualbox'. (a virtualization tool from Oracle/solairs)

Afterwards when I booted back up, dialogs came up that eventually lead to a semi system - restore, where windows automatically tries to fix itself by replacing the system files and rolling back to last known working settings.

I didn't notice any problems for a few days other than having quite a few updates (12) to install. Finally windows update reports 'no updates available', so I'm uptoday now.

Today I happened to try to start a tool I haven't used since the crash called 'Basecamp' by Garmin (the gps people).

It would not start and reported an error that I didn't keep but it was something about "Windows Imaging Components" not being available. Foolishly, my first thought was re-install Basecamp, and even foolisher, I uninstalled it first, then downloaded latest version and attempted to install. It would not install, with error
'MSI error: InstallerAlreadyRunning'

Trying to install 'Windows Imaging Components' for win7 64 bit fails with the error:
'Setup cannot find update.inf'
I seem to be screwed all the way round.

I did find one goggle hit that said a certain update was the cause and if you removed that update it would work again.... It was kind of an old message, and when I looked at my list of updates I could see I did not have the one they mentioned.

Googling on all these errors, I find that this is not an unusual problem... but the suggested fixes, so far, are not covering it.

I hope someone here may have some experience with this sort of thing and be able to make some suggestions.