Unlike XP, Win-7 does not show you all the restore points when you first open the app. You have to ask it to show you MORE restore points.
I hope that will help.
I really liked the way System Restore worked in XP and I wish the MS stooges had left it alone.
But they had to screw that up like everything else.
I use System Restore so much that I run a little script to Force a new Restore Point on every boot up,
even if that's several times a day. Then, I delete all the extra Restore Points when I do my weekly
Ghost backup of my C: drive.
good luck,
Shadow