No services on startup, no cp/recovery/update

All the sudden the other day every time I boot my laptop the audio service is not running, nothing loads in the notification area, and trying to open the network and sharing center/recovery/update/firefox results in a never ending load that I must terminate with the task manager. I have rebooted (including in safe mode) to no avail. I am stumped as to why this happened and how to fix it.

Sounds like a malware infection to me. One of them disables all services. Try doing a System Restore to before this happened.

I can't open recovery.

Try pressing Shift+F8 during boot. See Option 3 here: http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2757-safe-mode-start-windows-8-a.html

See if System Restore (not recovery) will start from there.