Message:

An error occurred while loading Dragon components. Speech recognition will
be disabled.

A serious error occurred while starting NaturallySpeaking. Please try
reinstalling the product to correct this problem.

When logging on, the following message displays:

This error may also be accompanied by an Event Viewer error.

This is caused by a file named program which exists at the root of the C:\ drive (or %systemdrive%):

This is a known issue that affects other Windows applications as well. For more information, see: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/325680

To fix the issue, simply rename the file to programold.