Vista - The system event notification service service failed logon ... token does not exist

I have been getting the following errors when I try to log into my account.

The system event notification service service failed the logon an attempt was made to reference a token that does not exist

I created a built-in-administrator and I am able to get into safe mode though not able to run many programs on it such as control panel and start up repair. I looked at my registry and both of my accounts look fine neither of them had a .bak on the end and so I'm not sure how to fix this if my only option is to delete my user account. I've already done a system restore to a couple days before this happened but, I'm still locked out of everything.

Is there anything else I can do that might help?

Google led me to this post as I was researching the problem myself. I encountered the same issue. In this case on a vista32 ultimate box (although I do own an x64 box in case somebody thinks I'm blasphemous posting here ).

I haven't completely fixed the issue yet but I've gotten a bit further so in hopes of helping the next person here are the steps I've taken.

I was able to log in successfully in safe mode (hit F8 while starting up, select safe mode). Once there I went to command prompt (click the start button, type "cmd" [without the quotes] in the search bar and hit enter. From command prompt type services.msc to launch the services control panel. Find the System Event Notification Service, right click, select properties, change it from automatic startup to disabled, apply the change and "OK" out of the dialog box. You can now restart the computer and log in normally.

This isn't really a fix, it's a temporary work-around. SENS is needed for COM+ to respond to things like login and startup events. I've also noticed that my system is very slow right now. My next step is to find a way to generate a new token for SENS and then hopefully I'll be back at 100%. I currently have Dell researching that for me (this happens to be a Dell laptop). If I get a solution short of a reinstall to that one I'll post it too.

Hope this is helpful for someone. Good luck.