Trying to install & play minecraft 1.7.2 or 1.7.4 ends with "Couldn't unpack natives!"

Have been playing minecraft almost daily since June 2012. Always worked fine.

On December, 5th, I got strange behaviour of minecraft which finally led me to (repetedly during the last few days) manually deleting all contents of the .minecraft folder as well as Java 64 bit through official Microsoft program delition mechanism.

After re-installing the latest Java 64 bit version I downloaded the MC launcher 1.3.6 but it always end with "Couldn't unpack natives!" in the Development Console". Tried multiple times.

Was hoping to have this solved in MC 1.7.4 but itdefinitley isn't. Also saw couple of similar reports from others yesterday but today I can't find them any longer?!