SharePoint 2010 central administration site error

I have just come to revisit an old virtual sharepoint 2010 install. When I crank up central administration I get the following error:

The module was expected to contain an assembly manifest. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80131018)

Line 379:    <compilation batch="false" debug="false">
Line 380:      <assemblies>
Line 381:        <add assembly="Microsoft.SharePoint, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c" />

I have looked in the GAC and the assemblies are there.

I have ran the central administration configuration wizard through to see if this repaired the issue.

Can anyone suggest and an approach to resolving this?

all the best

Right, I think it was an application pool setting that was the issue. The central admin app pool was set to framework version 2.0 - I have changed it to 4.0 and am now past this error.

I think this is the cause of the issue but would appreciate anyone's views on this.