IIS MMC will not open or run

[mkamoski]

Hi.

Please help.

All of a sudden, IIS and MMS will not open or run on this XP Pro machine.

When I try to launch the MMC from the standard icon, nothing happens. If I launch c:\windows\system32\mmc.exe directly, it loads. Then I try to manually open c:\windows\system32\inetsrv\iis.mmc and the MMC locks while trying to open the file and has to be forced shut.

This is baffling. No new software has been installed in over a month. IIS had been functioning just fine at last check, 2 days ago. The machine is fully patches with the lastest Critical and Recommended updates from the Windows Update. Anti-virus is up-to-date and an anti-virus scan shows that the machine is clean. Other programs are running just fine. The machine is a P4 2.4 GHz with 1 GB RAM.

I have changed the password on my main user account recently; but, login to the domain is working just fine. The same situation occurs if I try to login to the local domain only.

I am on the travelling right now; so, I do not have the OS disk to do a remove and re-install right now-- but, that seems to be my next step. That said, I would LOVE to know what went wrong and how to fix it.

It looks to me like IIS is toasted.

:-(

Any ideas? Hints? Comments?

Please advise.

Thank you.

 

[mkamoski]

...one more thing with respect to my post above...

Note that the following Services...

IIS Admin
FTP Publishing
World Wide Web Publishing

...all have...

status = started

startup type = automatic

Also note that when I shut down the machine after tying to open the IIS MMC, right before shutdown, I get presented with a Save dialog box, promting me to save an "*.msc" file. This is odd, especially since the IIS MMC console itself was never shown.

Also not that I have my resolution set quite high, 1024 x 1250, so I do not think that the IIS MMC window was open and simply moved off of the viewable screen. Furthermore, to this point, when I try a ALT+TAB to switch between windows, the IIS MMC does not show-- so, I doubt that it is running somewhere off-screen.

Again, I am stumped here and would appreciate help.

Thank you.