The windowscodecs.dll unrecoverable error

This is a nice fix I found the other day.

While messing about in my VMware Workstation 9 lab I came across this when trying to power on some server 2008 r2 machines:

Was it the host OS or was it the virtual machine images that somehow got corrupted? They were linked clones so that was a possibility.

The event viewer on the host wasn't very helpful as it gave no clue and just showed the application pop-up events containing the same error message about windowscodecs.dll.

The funny thing was that after clicking ok repeatedly until my index finger got numb the virtual machines could eventually start.So the "unrecoverable error" was no more than a nuissance really.

The first thing I’ve tried, reverting to older snapshots, didn't bring any joy and brought me great dissapointment as I ran out of ideas.
Clearly the virtual machines were not at fault. I even created a vanilla Server 2008 R2 machine which threw the same error at me when I attempted to power on.

I had no inspiration at the moment and no whiskey around so after reading the VMware Communities Forums and the top 15 Google results about similar issues, I decided to downgrade to VMware Workstation 8.I know... "don't believe everything you read on the internet!"
I usually don't but I find that searching the web can often give me an idea on what to do next or where to start troubleshooting.In this case   searching the web for similar issues helped me decide to wipe the VMware installation and re-install WMware Workstation 9 from scratch. 

The VMware installation cleaner will tidy up the registry keys and system files should you ever decide to start fresh

So I reinstalled VMware Workstation 9 and the dreaded error showed up again when trying to power on virtual machines.I then tried to replace windowscodecs.dll on the virtual machines with the version from the installation ISO.Still no joy.
Finding myself in the brinks of despair i turn to the OS.Why not modify windowscodecs.dll on the host with the one from the ISO?After a simple copy-paste and reboot I started WMware workstation only to stumble across the error message again.

During that moment I found myself struck by inspiration so I started searching for the most recent Microsoft hotfix that replaces windowscodecs.dll which lead me to this.

Needless to say that all my virtual machines started with no issues and my index finger was happy to get away from all those clicks after installing the hotfix.