Restore problem in ME

[needhelp]

For no apparant reason when I booted the computer this morning it just went to a black screen and nothing else, no flashing cursor, nothing. I rebooted again and this time it went into safe mode. I am running ME. so I hit the restore button and selected a date for the computer to restore to and it started to do its thing and then about half way, the computer rebooted and came back on, this time everything was okay but had a screen up saying that, my computer could not be restored to this date. (the date was a genuine restore point) however the computer at the moment is now running okay and I haven't shut it down since. This has happenned to me in the past with the restore thing in ME, works okay when things are going okay but when I have needed it to restore to an earlier date cos of some little problem that I may have, same thing, it always comes up with the same message, cant restore computer to this date.
I have had to reformat and reinstall in the past to get the thing going again. What the use is the restore function if it doesn't work when you need it. Is there any other way to restore ME to a previous date if this happens again. I read somewhere the restore thing is best disabled, if this is so how do I do that and how else may i restore the computer to an earlier configuration. Does the scanreg/restore work on ME
I am not sure if the original problem (booting to a black screen) is the fault of Windows, I didn't even notice if the computer went through its post but why didn't the restore thing do its job.

[andyms18a]

did you download the me restore update from the microsoft web site. all so have you changed any hardwair since the restore point was made. and i wood check your video card and ram see if you can get some diagnostic softwair from the web. and check you have the lateist drivers for your hardwair

[not important]

I have had the same thing happen, with System Restore, to me numerous times. I disabled Restore and use Norton Ghost.