It is a good idea to make backup images of your drive - they can be restored in a few minutes- in fact it the probably the most important thing you can do.
There is an excellent small, fast program - the free version is probably all you need.
If you only have one operating system ( sounds like you do) - you use the bootable disc the program runs off to restore the image.
Make another image every now and again so it is reasonably up to date and delete the old one.
You need to store the image somewhere that is not your operating system partition .
Make another partition for that , or use an external drive.
Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download
System restore is a useful tool - it should be working.
What exactly is the problem - at what point does it fail - any error messages?