Sometimes, when you are playing with SharePoint 2013, you will encounter this error message: “Unable to retrieve topology component health states.  This may be because the admin component is not up and running.” You will see this error message on your Central Administration page -> Application Management -> Manage Services on the server -> click on the “SharePoint Search Server”






This article provides resolution on SharePoint 2013 that is installed on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP 1 and SQL Server 2008 R2. The server is not a domain controller or hosting SQL either.
 
To resolve this issue, please download the following fixes on Microsoft website

KB 2554876
KB 2708075
KB 2472264

If after installing the above hotfixes and you still encounter issue, you need to run Windows Update and installing all patches/hotfixes reported as critical.

Once this had been done (and a reboot or two later), the problem will be resolved!

The updates in installed are below (so it’s one or more of them?)