"Failed to connect to a windows service..."

[blue4paper]

Today, I encountered a BSOD and after restarting my computer, for whatever reason, the skins for my "launchy" and "rainlendar" widget programs got restored to default and this message at the bottom of my screen started appearing,

"Failed to connect to a windows service. Windows could not connect to the group policy service."

Then there's a little bit about not being able to log on as admin etc..

I can't for the life of me figure out why this could be happening after a BSOD.

Running windows 7 x64bit.

any help would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[office politics]

run this command. im guessing the service is in a stopped state

sc query gpsvc


if state is stopped, then run

sc start gpsvc