DT Lite not working after January 2018 Win7 updates

Hello, after the recent round of Microsoft updates for January 2018 (specifically KB4056894), my Daemon Tools Lite 4.48.1 with SPTD 1.84 stopped working (after YEARS working OK) on my Win7 SP1 machine.
The usual two images which I am used to use with DT Lite since MANY years, are no more correctly handled by DT Lite.
Anytime I try to reach or do something with SPTD it asks for its installation and reboot but that installation does not succeed and upon reboot it asks again for its installation.
Indeed the SPTD options in DT Lite have become grayed-out after KB4056894.
I uninstalled 4.48 with 1.84 from my machine (as fully as I could and it was a hard job: lots of leftovers on disk and on the registry) and then tried installing Daemon Tools Lite 10.7.0 with SPTD 2.11 on that same machine but no success with my two images.
I also tried installing Daemon Tools Lite 10.7.0 with SPTD 2.11 on a Win7 SP1 machine with all the Microsoft updates (including KB4056894) but where DT was never installed before: still no success in using my two images.
Did the latest Meltdown/Spectre round of January 2018 updates from Microsoft changed something that will require a new version of DT Lite and/or SPTD?
Can someone help?
Thx