System Restore & Others not working!

Hello,
Heres whats going on. I suddenly have no Sound, and system restore and Search won't work at all. When they come up it will show a completely blank and white window. I looked to see if the files for system restore were in Regedit, but they aren't at all where they are supposed to be! What does this mean, and how can I fix it? Or is there just anyway I can restore my computer to an earlier time without actually using System Restore? I hope somebody can tell me something, Thanks.