Here's the deal, I noticed my cd rom drive wasn't recognized by windows from My computer. I went to access device manager and now it's telling it can't find the MMC.exe file. I also tried opening up services from admin tools and I am unable to open any .msc files, my thinking is that since MMC.exe is missing, this is so. I can boot up from the cd rom drive though and access the windows xp disc but am unable to extract any files from windows since it is not recognized by windows. Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks.

So when you click on the Services option in Computer Management, what happens? Have you tried a System Restore to a date before this happened? "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

It gives the generic pop up message, "windows cannot open this file" Use the web or select a program from the list etc... Tried a system restore going back as far as I could go but no luck...

Are you accessing the Services using Computer Management, or some other way? "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

Just by navigating from Start, Control Panel, Admin Tools, Services. None of the admin tools open though. Anything with a .msc extension gives the same message.

So, right-clicking on My Computer and selecting Manage generates an error? Can you get to System Restore? I'm not clear on the booting to the CD. Can you indeed boot to the Windows CD? If so, you could do a Repair of the OS. "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

Doesn't generate errors just prompts me to select a program to open it with. I mentioned performing a system restore in a previous post but that did not remedy the issue. I can boot to the windows cd before windows loads up.