Group Policy Client Connection Issue

Hello,

I have an issue that isn't very bothersome for now, but I'm worried it might become one later, so I prefer to be proactive. For some time now, when I turn on my computer, a message appears:

"Failed to connect to a Windows service
Windows could not connect to the Group Policy Client service. This prevents standard users from logging on to the system. As an administrator, you can open the system event log for more information."

Looking in the event log, I see there's an event (ID: 7000) corresponding to the problem, but I'm not quite sure what to do with that information. Furthermore, if I look at the list of services, for the Group Policy Client row, the "status" column is empty, and if I right-click, I can't start it manually (all tasks are grayed out).

So, I don't know if this service is very important, so I'd like to know how to resolve the issue.

P.S.: I should mention that I installed a new hard drive on my laptop and just reinstalled Windows. The problem appeared at that time.

Configuration: Windows 7