Windows XP services not starting

This morning two of our salesmen reported the same issue with their laptops.   When the started up their laptops they were missing the WIndows Taskbar, the windows key did not work and neither did Ctrl-Esc.  

We finally got the windows taskbar back but they can not get any internet connection. I had them check services and most of the autostart services were not running.  I had them try to start them manually but most of the services would not start.  They either get a dependency error or a message saying that the services could not start.  

I had them reboot and look in the event log.  The only errors they could find were in the system log and occured on starting the services.  The error was 193: 0xc1

I had they try to do a restore but when they try it tells them they need to reboot first.  And if they go back and try it again it just tells them the same thing.

I tried to get them to use msconfig and do a selective startup but even if they are logged on as administrator it tells them they can save it they need administrator privileges.  

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.