can't add fields, dropdowns don't appear

I am trying to create my first view on a brand new Drupal 5.5 installation.

I do have Liquid Layout installed, though it is now turned off in an effort to fix my issue. I also have CCK and several extension fields for it; as well as a few other modules installed.

My issue is that in the past I have always gone into a new view and easily created a list style view with a list of all the node fields I wanted to include. Now I am running into a problem where non of the dropdown lists that noramally appear allowing me to add criteria to the views are showing up.

Basically everything below the Block section is empty with no lists or buttons appearing. I have tried changing to List View thinking that some javascript might be running the process but no go. This is the first time I have ever had an issue with the views module and I am at a loss as to what could cause such a drastic issue.

At first I was affraid I had installed the version 2 that was being warned against since it is currently in development, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Here is an export of what I have been able to do with the view, not much is there because I can't do much without the options being available:

$view = new stdClass();
$view->name = 'Testimonials';
$view->description = 'Testimonials';
$view->access = array (
);
$view->view_args_php = '';
$view->page = TRUE;
$view->page_title = 'Testimonials';
$view->page_header = '';
$view->page_header_format = '1';
$view->page_footer = '';
$view->page_footer_format = '1';
$view->page_empty = 'There are no testimonials at this time.';
$view->page_empty_format = '1';
$view->page_type = 'teaser';
$view->url = 'view/testimonials';
$view->use_pager = TRUE;
$view->nodes_per_page = '10';
$view->sort = array (
);
$view->argument = array (
);
$view->field = array (
);
$view->filter = array (
);
$view->exposed_filter = array (
);
$view->requires = array();
$views[$view->name] = $view;