I go to control panel, try to open up power options from there, it acts like it's loading for a second, then nothing.
I right click my battery icon in the taskbar, go to "adjust power properties" and the same thing happens.
Am I missing something simple here? I just cannot seem to open up Power Options.

Try: Start,Run, 'POWERCFG.CPL'

Post #7 at this link helps a lot:

http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t230785-xp-sp2-control-panel-missing-power-options.html

When I tried powercfg.cpl, it did the same thing as when I tried to open from the Power Options icon.

And I tried both of the methods that other post listed, but the first one (sfc /scannow) finished scanning and just disappeared and the second one (the file signature verification utility) found four "un-signed" files (none of which looked to have any connection to powercfg or anything of the like) with no indication of what to do to/with those files.

In addition, I saw powercfg.cpl in the system32 folder, but I don't have a ServicePackFiles folder in which to look for the spare. Could this have something to do with the problem?