Unable to Shut down or Restart Windows 7 systems?

In the last two days, we have received reports from Windows 7 users who have been unable to shut down or restart their PC and ran into the below error.

While the exact cause of the issue is yet to be ascertained there is no official confirmation from Microsoft yet. However, our support team has been on its toes to find a fix for this issue. We are happy to announce that we may just have found the root cause of the problem.

In the reported cases, as a workaround, the steps detailed in the KB article have helped users resolve this issue.