I've just found a solution to this error (that worked for me, hopefully it would work for others as well).
I had to install updated versions of both 32 and 64 bit java runtime from oracle. (I'm running 64 bit windows 7, and using the 64 bit minion client, but still needed to install the 32 bit JRE to get it working).
The downloads I needed were available from
https://java.com/en/download/manual.jsp using the windows offline downloads.
Cheers and good luck.