Yes it seems the system restore has worked, but there are a few things I have to re-download again since it took it back to factory settings. At least I was able to save my pictures, music and System Mechanic so I can put those back on.

It's a Sony vaio laptop...and I have windows 7. I would say its been acting up for a couple weeks so I did use my System Mechanic, Vaio Care and the windows troubleshooter thing to try and get it working right but none of that was helping. Not sure if I changed any system wide settings or not...I know before it went to the black screen I disabled all the unnessisary back up programs but not sure that would have caused the issue.