Yes I am able to view those permissions, modify them etc. I am loggin in as domain admin, this machine only has 2 accts on it, local admin and domain admin, both with same rights. Strange thing is, after stopping IIS and restarting the machine (repeating this a few times), the service suddenly stopped on it's own. This is actually the second time I have seen this happen on this machine, (how I knew to keep restarting), I do not believe this machine and this app were installed and configured properly as it had not worked as planned since I took it over. Anyway, it is resolved now, thank you for your assistance, and hopefully with further research I can find out why it happens this way..
thanks again,
sm