Most of my systems are rather elderly and somewhat slow. I have at least three where the host service does not always start after switch on or re-start. All are Windows 7, and have host version 7.1.2.0 installed; viewers are also version 7.1.2.0. One is the system which I mostly use as viewer, and I can see that the remote utilities icon in the notification area does not always appear on start up; then I manually start the host. This is not so convenient when the host is remote, but I can sometimes use a competitor product to get in and start the host.
I've looked at host logs, which don't seem to have any relevant entries, though I do see some access violation exceptions there.
However, looking at the Widows event viewer, windows logs, system, and searching for "Remote Utilities", I find pairs of error entries: "A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the Remote Utilities - Host service to connect." immediately followed by "The Remote Utilities - Host service failed to start due to the following error:
The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion."
I can povide a sample host log, and it looks like I can extract a portion of the Windows log, if those would be helpful.