I tried removing the Handwriting Recognition as suggested above, but it did not help.
I also removed Speech Recognition in the same control panel. No help.
I then found the checkbox:
[Under Control Panel \ Regional and Language Options \ Languages \ Details \ Advanced]
called "Turn off advanced text services".
I checked this and my app works fine.
One other oddity for me...
When my application starts it read a config file and determines if it will use impersonation.
The above problem only occurred when I WAS using impersonation.
What the connection is puzzles me.
I thought maybe the account I was impersonating needed its settings adjusted changed as above.
So first I unchecked the "Turn off advanced text services", and my app failed as expected.
I logged into it the account I was impersonating, but found it was the first time I had done that. (It went through all the initializing profile stuff when I logged in).
I noticed Handwriting and Speech recognition were there, and "Turn off advanced text services" was checked already.
Thinking the first-login profile-building could somehow be the issue, I logged out, when back to my account, ran my app. Still failed.
Went back to the impersonation account. Removed Handwriting and Speech recognition.
Back to my account. App still fails.
So, the only way I've found is to check "Turn off advanced text services" in my account.
Why it only matters when I am impersonating a different account is confusing to me.
But it works for now.
Hope this helps someone.
Ion