So today the question was posed,

What happens if you stop the Central Administration or Web service in SharePoint in a small farm/single server?

Well maybe you should start them again. How you ask?

Use the stsadm command to do so. Simply run stsadm from the 12 hive (by default C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\web server extensions\12\bin) with the following options

For the Web Service
stsadm.exe -o provisionservice -action start -servicetype Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService

For central administration
stsadm.exe -o provisionservice -action start -servicetype Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService -servicename WSS_Administration