Backup and restore won't start

Windows 7 SP1 x64 pro, up to date on patches
Acronis True Image 2014, up to date

Went thru a lot of issues to get rid of damage from
a bad MS patch (KB 3004394). That seems to be
finished, but somewhere along the line the system
backup/restore functionality failed.

Acronis is installed, & it seems to be working ok.
I mention it because net research suggests it might
be involved.

Symptoms:
Windows 7 SP1 x64 pro, up to date on patches
Acronis True Image 2014, up to date

Went thru a lot of issues to get rid of damage from
a bad MS patch (KB 3004394). That seems to be
finished, but somewhere along the line the system
backup/restore functionality failed.

Acronis is installed, & it seems to be working ok.
I mention it because net research suggests it might
be involved.

Symptoms/investigation:
Noticed system backup/restore wouldn't work.
Went looking to see what configuration looked like.

control panel -> system -> system protection
instant popup
There was an unexpected error in the property page:
The Volume Shadow Copy service used by System Restore is not
working. For more information view the event log. (0x8100202)

Please close the property page and try again.

[Sits in "searching..." and every option is greyed out]

view event logs -> windows logs -> applications shows 2 errors:
Error 12/28/2014 11:56:32 VSS 8193 None
Error 12/28/2014 11:56:32 VSS 22 None

details, respectively:

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error calling routine CoCreateInstance. hr = 0x80040154, Class not registered
.

Operation:
Instantiating VSS server

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: A critical component required by the Volume Shadow Copy service is not registered. This might happened if an error occurred during Windows setup or during installation of a Shadow Copy provider. The error returned from CoCreateInstance on class with CLSID {e579ab5f-1cc4-44b4-bed9-de0991ff0623} and Name IVssCoordinatorEx2 is [0x80040154, Class not registered
].

Operation:
Instantiating VSS server

vss doesn't work at all.
vsadmin list providers returns
Error: unexpected failure: Class not registered.

I went thru this article & did everything:

Event ID 13 â
no diskshadow tho

I did a set of registrations I found here:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com...service-errors
with pretty much the same results.
Focusing on swprv.dll,
unregistering & re-initializing got me this:


The module "swprv.dll" was loaded but the call
to DllRegisterServer failed with error code 0x80070715
At this point, out of ideas/skills to move forward.

I should have mentioned that one too.
Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.

Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.

I did the sequence of regsvr32 registrations;
it starts kicking out errors at regsvr32 /s /i swprv.dll
notes about that are found in the initial message.
The /s kills the error message pop ups;
swprv gets this:
The module "swprv.dll" was loaded but the call to
DllRegisterServer failed with error code 0x80070715.

Likewise eventcls.dll
es.dll:
The module "es.dll" was loaded but the entry-point
DllRegisterServer was not found.


vssdui.dll:
The module "vssdui.dll" failed to load
Make sure the binary is stored at the specified path or
debug it to check for problems with the binary or
dependent .DLL files.

The specified module could not be found.

Likewise msxml.dll and msxml4.dll

Rebooted - no difference in VSS.

Likewise with the downloaded VSSfix .exe same null result.
No error messages from the .exe.