POST System Restore, System FUBAR'd?

[Julian]

I made a mistake yesterday installing some software (a LaTeX to Word
converter... I forgot to do something else first...) and decided to undo the
error by using System Restore - unfortunately (and not the 1st time it has
done it to me) after the Restore the system was wrecked: every Explorer
action was calling Office XP installation and every time I cancelled it it
restarted.

Most applications were gone (1st clue: shortcuts no longer referred to
anything, and - yep - sure enough there was nothing in the appropriate
program folder) and...

Well, I restored the system from a drive backup, but does anyone know why
System Restore should do this? Fortunately I had moved all Documents etc.
under my account to a separate partititon so only had to restore the C drive
for OS & apps (System Restore is only enabled for C but it wasn't like
that the last time SR clumped muddy boots over everything... (after which I
turned it off as I was out of disk space anyway - only turned it back on
after upgrading the laptop to a 250GB drive)

Thoughts?

Ta.

[System: Rock Xtreme CTX Pro, Core Duo, 2GB RAM, Vista HP SP1]

 

[John Barnes]

Since SR doesn't affect your Program Files, don't expect a reply. System
Restore is also reversible. Try looking for something else.