System Preferences won't open

I am on a Mac Mini running OS X Tiger. When I try to bring up system preferences from either an ordinary account or an administrative one, nothing happens. We've had service provider changes, and I need to fix my DNS servers and subnet mask. I went to the help menu under system preferences, and clicked on an "open this for me" link for System Preferences. I get a dialog back that states "The item cannot be opened. It may be disabled or not installed.

Any help will be appreciated.

Sorry I put the previous post on this forum. I will move it to the OS X one. But if you have any suggestions, please don't hesitate ...

I am on a Mac Mini running OS X Tiger. When I try to bring up system preferences from either an ordinary account or an administrative one, nothing happens. We've had service provider changes, and I need to fix my DNS servers and subnet mask. I went to the help menu and found an entry for "Changing your computer's settings", and clicked on an "open this for me" link for System Preferences. I get a dialog back that states "The item cannot be opened. It may be disabled or not installed."

Any help will be appreciated.

open a finder window and go to applications and try to open it from there. if it is not there then do a spotlight search for system preferences.