A restore problem?

Hi,
I have a client who has two XP pro machines networked. They upgraded to SP2 – a can of worms, now mostly resolved. However, one point that is causing major hassles is that when they turn on their machines in the morning they don’t network. Tracked this down to the windows firewall not being started – OK started the firewall and all works. Set the firewall service from manual start to auto start, applied etc. Then shutdown both computers and restarted, everything fine.
Next morning the same situation of the network not starting, the firewall again not started and had returned to MANUAL start.

Is this the restore function kicking in and will a create restore point fix?

Thanks, in advance.