IIS Service failing, cannot start Com+ System Application

Recently my IIS service have been failing with COM+ errors in my event log:

A condition has occurred that indicates this COM+ application is
in an unstable state or is not functioning correctly.
Assertion Failure: SUCCEEDED(hr)

Server Application ID: {02D4B3F1-FD88-11D1-960D-00805FC79235}
Server Application Instance ID:
{A62B5BD2-D95E-4CA0-AD12-E719088125BC}
Server Application Name: System Application
The serious nature of this error has caused the process to terminate.
Error Code = 0x8000ffff : Catastrophic failure
COM+ Services Internals Information:
File: d:qxp_slpcomcom1xsrccomsvcstrackertrksvrtrksvrimpl.cpp, Line: 3000
Comsvcs.dll file version: ENU 2001.12.4414.308 shp

Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool reports that it removed CutWail from my system but on furthur inspection CutWail was still present and I manually removed the 2 files (ip6fw.sys and secdrv.sys) in %systemroot%/system32/drivers/ along with some reg entries.

Next I suspected a corrupted IIS installation, so I reinstalled IIS but the problem persists. It turns out the COM+ System Application Service could not be start. (And IIS depends on COM+)

The symptons are as follows (i’ve ranked them in order of discovery):

1. Visual Studio refused to load web application projects. (giving me the “visual studio cannot create or open the application because the web server on this computer is not running” error)
2. Browser unable to connect to localhost
3. World Wide Web Publishing service stops by itself after it starts. (Or when i try to load projects in VS)
4. IIS Admin service stops in the same fashion as the above.
5. COM+ errors in event log (see event details above)
6. COM+ System Application could not be start (Error when you try to start it).

After looking around and tested many solutions I finally found one that fixed the problem (without reformating and reinstalling everything, as a few people suggested).

Solution:

1. Refer to How to clean up a damaged COM+ catalog (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315296) to repair COM+
2. Reinitialising IIS by running rundll32 %windir%system32inetsrvwamreg.dll, CreateIISPackage (also detailed in the KB article)

Did the above work for you too?