does anyone know exactly what changes when you restore your system back to a restore point?

I understand that folder structures and files will not be changed back to the way they were at the time of the restore point, so what does exactly change?

There is a registry entry that I want to get rid of, but I have no idea where it is or what the name of it is. But if the registry is restored to the actual point in time that the restore point was made, I can simply copy my data to a drive and restore the system, problem solved.

would this do the trick for what I want to get done? advice certainly appreciated! thanks.

Found this in WikiMedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restore_point

Resources monitored

The following resources are backed up: [6] (http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/#cite_note-XPSystemRestoreFAQs-5)

Registry (http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/wiki/Windows_Registry)
Files in the Windows File Protection (http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/wiki/Windows_File_Protection) (Dllcache) folder
Local user profile
COM+ (http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/wiki/COM%2B) and WMI Databases
IIS Metabase
Specific file types monitored [5] (http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/#cite_note-FileTypes-4)

blaster,

I also found out that my vista system deletes all restore points, because each backup is 3Gb and the limit default is something like 3.5.

I found a solution though, I changed the limit to 10 through dos. thanks for the link!