I did a system restore was after nVidia video driver 158.18 caused major problems with my system, making it very unstable and causing normally stable programs to crash. Once "restored", my system was still unstable - although different problems to the video driver issues - so I re-installed Vista.

Of course, you can only ever install Vista once - according to MS, the reliability of Vista and modern computer components means you will never have a problem and you will never need to re-install Vista again - yeah, right!!! 

So there I was on the phone to MS explaining why I needed to re-activate their operating system... sigh...

I had a major hard drive crash a little while ago and lost everything - and I mean everything. It is a shame you never really appreciate backup until you need it!!! So I now back up all the time.I keep Vista and all my data separate on C and D drives (always have) and now have an external hard drive for backup as well. 

But I won't bother with system restore again!