Vista Task Scheduler and other tools won't start!

I have Vista Basic x64. In Administrative Tools, I cannot get Task Scheduler, Event Viewer, Disk Management and Windows Firewall to open correctly. Actually they do eventually open, but not until a window pops up that's says "Adding snap-in console".

All of the other tools like services, Memory Diagnostics etc, open up just fine. Before I did a couple of System Restores, I was still having this problem and I read where I needed to have Windows Event log running for these tools to work. See I had turned it off.

So I re-enabled it and it solved the problem. But this time, Windows Event Log is already enabled, so I don't know what else to do.

I tried playing a bit with the Microsoft Management Console, however I have little experience in working with it. Also when I opened it up the first time, there were no snap-ins present. So, I clicked on "Add/Remove Snap-In". At that point, a list came up in the left pane that listed all of the available snap-ins. Then I just added the ones that would not open for me. The ones listed above.

Funny thing though, when I went to enter the first snap-in, another window came up
that asked me "What computer do you want this snap-in to manage"? And there were two options, "This computer", which was already checked, or "The following computer". And greyed-out on that was MAINSYSTEM, which is the name of my computer

So I stuck with "This Computer", though one time I went the other route and checked "The following computer", just to see if that would help. It didn't. So then I continued to add the other tools that were not working. And each time that "Select computer..." option would come up.

Anyway when I got all four of them in the right pane, I closed MMC, but not before it asked me to save what did. Then I rebooted and tried to open Tash Scheduler and others, but the same thing happened.

It's funny but I read in the MMC Help, that I should add a snap-in in a totally different way. Here's just some of what it said:

To create a new snap-in console from within MMC 3.0, do one of the following:
From within a snap-in console, on the File menu, click New. At a command line, type mmc /a. etc etc

First of all when I clicked "New" it didn't do anything but just open up Console2. Also, I don't know what it means about entering that info in the command line. What command line?

So regardless if I did this process right or wrong, none of the settings ever seemed to stick. I would close out MMC, then reopen it, and nothing was there in the right pane. None of the tools that I entered. That is until I went to file and opened up the file I saved. Then they were all there. But is that the way it's supposed to work?

I'm lost! And contemplating a reformat!

Jan LaFata