Have you tried running the Configuration Wizard, selecting 'repair' and then checking all the boxes? I also had this problem when I upgraded a really old version of NPM (10.0.1 > 11.5.2). Have you performed a similar update recently?
The problem I had was that my server was missing some required Visual C++ binaries. Check to see if the following files are present:
c:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvcr110.dll
c:\Windows\SysWOW64\msvcp110.dll
If not (and you're running NPM 11.5.2, or have upgraded your stand alone version of NCM to the most recent version), then try installing the 32-bit AND 64-bit versions of Visual C++ 2013 from the Microsoft Website. Then try running the configuration wizard again.