I have winxp and no matter what point i choose to restore at it goes through the motions but when it gets back to the desktop i get messge cannot restore such and such a date.in fact i now have 3 of evry shortcut.
This happened to me after I started XP with the "Last Know Good Configuration" option. That startup option messed it up and I couldn't restore. I just had to fix things the best I could and move on.