On my home iMac I run a variety of flavours of Windows through Parallels. In the main to test Windows software and to access some sites which only really work on IE.
Over the last few months I have been running in the main Windows 7 or Windows Vista.
A couple of days ago I started the Windows XP VM on Parallels and started getting a WMI crashing error.
A Google search brought up this solution however despite trying this (including deleting the relevant files from Parallels Explorer.
It was suggested to me that it might be a virus, but even my AV software then started to crash.
The only solution was to delete the VM and create a new VM and install Windows XP all over again. Not a quick solution as there are quite a few updates to install like SP3.
Seems to be working now.