This is not an issue with any windows updates, nore is it linked to the installation of any one program. It seems to happen randomly after a install of a program, it has now spread to all 4 machines that were running windows 7 in this house, all with different software & hardware setups.
It's not linked to java as I haven't installed it yet on one of the machines with the issue. I'm having this issue as well on 2 different machines now, tried removing windows updates to no joy so it doesn't seem related to any one update and both of the machines have very different software...