Problems with opening MMC

While working on some of the MMC related consoles I used to get a error something like below when I try to open the MMC(say dsa.msc or any other).

"MMC cannot open the file . This may be because the file does not exist, is not an MMC console, or was created by a later version of MMC. This may also be because you don't have sufficient access rights to the file"

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When I first came across this issue three years back, I spent numerous amount of time to find the solution and using it successfully since then. Also shared this tip with few of my colleagues who faced this problem. I thought of sharing this with my blog audience to make them not to struggle with this kind of error again.

Solution:

Go to start run and enter the command, “%appdata%/Microsoft/MMC” and click on OK

In the opened folder look for file that matches the mmc name troubling you and renamed it to some like backup and try opening your MMC again. It should work!.

TIP : If you have problems in opening “Active Directory Users and Computers”, you need to deal with the file named dsa.

If you are smart enough and you have old backups of this folder, try to compare the file and see what has changed. It’s just falt file with some values structure in XML. Most probably, you want to look at “MMC_ConsoleFile ConsoleVersion” value. This value should be equivalent to your MMC version. Problem may be different in your case, so compare with backup file to list the diffs which helps in reading the problem.

Happy Learning...,
Sitaram Pamarthi