System Restore causes more problems than it solves. If you use restore some programs will stop working. In particular Norton Antivirus is totally shagged by it. It will also, rather stupidly, save viruses for you, which are then a pain to eliminate because of course you can't directly delete files from the restore folder as they are protected by Windows. If you use restore which has a quarantined virus in there it will quite cheerfully restore the virus to full working order. If you are not careful it will eat up the whole of your hard drive with its numerous restore points. And finally, it doesn't actually restore anything of use.
Use System Restore and you will most likely find yourself restoring from backup - so it's better to do that in the first place!
The only time I used System Restore was to correct a minor problem with a printer driver. The System Restore messed up so bad a clean install was the only cure. Never again! Since then I make sure I always have a full backup to use if required. a minimum of three - one on the drive, one on a second drive and one on CD. Peace at last...
