Unable to Start VMware Host

On my Windows 7 physical host, I had had VMware Server running for eons. Used it last week and all was fine. Today  (after installing windows updates this weekend), host wouldn’t start. Error gives 'Windows could not start the VMware Host Agent on Local Computer. For more information, review the System Event Log. If this is a non-Microsoft service, contact the service vendor, and refer to service-specific error code -1.'.  The solution for me was like the linked post stated. I had a corrupt datastores.xml file. On my Win7 machine that file was located here: C:\Users\All Users\VMware\VMware Server\hostd.

Deleting c:\ProgramData\VMware and then reinstalling had no effect. Finding that datastores file and replacing it with the default datastores.xml file fixed my problem with no additional re-install required.