WINDOWS Vista service error when opening stuff.

[sashaovc]

After messing with the configuration of my WINDOWS Vista Ultimate, I have many problems. However, I feel I should be able to correct a lot of them were it not for this one problem: when I try to open one of many things, I get this error:

The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.

Unfortunately, this applies to services.msc. Not only do I not know which service it is talking about, but I am unable to "pick" the service via services.msc. Also, attempting to work around services.msc by using msconfig does not work either. In addition to generating this error, if msconfig tries to start on startup (because the configuration has been modified), it is blocked by the Windows Defender because it requires an administrator password. If I can get help with these, I may try to fix the remainder of the many problems.

[oracleguy]

Well, have you tried booting up in safe mode to see if you can get into the services snap-in?

Also if you look at the event viewer, that might give you more information on which service is giving you the trouble. You can get to it by typing in: eventvwr in the run window.

[sashaovc]

Hmm, I looked at the event log, and there was nothing to indicate any failure... but the snapin did open in safe mode. Any other suggestions as to how to diagnose what is causing the problem? Could someone boot WINDOWS Vista Ultimate in safe mode and post the services that are running? And then I could check my services against that list and see if I am missing some important but nonessential service.
EDIT: or, could someone suggest a better way to debug the error?