does it reboot the pc then when it does reboot does the dialog box come up and tell you it has been restored to the date you selected? IF not you may not have a had a restore. What windows version are you using? There are certain malware that do cause system restore to not function properly you may have one. Each time you perform a restoration, it is a change made to your computer. System Restore creates restore operation restore points to track the change and the restoration. You can select these restore operation restore points in the Select a restore point screen in the System Restore Wizard to undo the restoration. You can also check there to see if the restore you think you just did actually took if so it will be listed there so you have the option to undo the restoration.

Then you will need to restore from a disc that came with the computer. Restore from Recovery Media 9 Insert the first recovery disk into your optical drive, then restart your computer. 10 Press "F12" as the computer begins to boot up and you see the initial BIOS screen. 11 Select "CD/DVD option" in the menu by using the arrow keys, the press the "Enter" key. 12 Click on "Recovery of Factory Default Software," then "Next." 13 Click on "Recover to out-of-box state," then click on "Next." 14 Click on "Next" to begin the restoration process. 15 Allow the Toshiba recovery program to work. This may take several minutes. 16 Press any key on the keyboard when prompted to do so to restart your restored Toshiba Satellite A135 laptop. Information taken from here: Read more: http://www.ehow.com/how_6772145_restore-toshiba-satellite-a135-laptop.html#ixzz2hcyDhiVP

yes I did the custom install, and now have FF7.01. Some of the toolbar settings have carried through, most have not...only 3 add ons came through. Do you know of any way to find the list of add ons that I had so I can just hopefully enable them? I sure hate the thought of going through all that again. Things like this are what makes me say I live in the land of "IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT." But that would be too easy wouldn't it. thanks for your guidance...

many pc companies put a separate partition on the drive and label it D, it contains everything that came on the pc when you got it and that is what you use should you need to reformat, they do that now instead of giving you the actual cd's to be able to go back to the factory setup. In system restore settings you can tell it which drives to set restore points for. to find out if you have sp3 you should be able to go to start> add remove programs, make sure show updates is checked at the top and then look down the list for the windows update service pack3, also you can right click on My computer choose properties then on the General tab it will tell you what you have. There in that same area if you click on the system restore tab you can see which drives it is monitoring, for example mine has C and D and both are showing as being monitored as it should be.