Hi there,
Thank you for your reply. I haven't been able to get back here to update this thread but I was able to replace the Components registry hive with a copy from another Win7HP installation. Then ran SURT (which took almost a day and a half). Once that completed, I was able to perform a repair install of Windows which corrected the rest of the residual issues. Updates are working as expected, the system is error free, and is no longer suffering from the corruption and random errors during Windows Updates. My client is happy that I was able to save him from a reinstall.
This thread can be closed.
Thank you!