The other problem is that the Gear issue can be made to happen pretty easily.
On the computer I’ve been testing, I have 4 versions of Wavelab 9: Pro 32 and 64, and Elements 32 and 64. I uninstalled both Elements versions, reboot, and then GearASPIWDM won’t start. And from what I can tell the only way to get Gear back is to do the registry manual uninstall. Not impossible, but an aggravating, time consuming process.
Trying to get it back with any of the functions in the Gear installer (uninstall, repair, reinstall) doesn’t work as far as I can tell, at least not on Win 10 Redstone 1.