Awaking To Chaos . . .

So got up this morning mother indicates her monitor will not come on.  I go in and the monitor IS on the screen is  blank but there is a cursor.  So I go about trying to get the computer to boot up, I'm not a techie so that's asking a lot.  It just continued to do the same thing over and over "a critical component has died" and kept trying to repair itself.  As a last ditch effort I did a system restore, never done that before but HALLELUJAH it worked.  She's back to Windows 7 pro and I had to reinstall her Solitaire game, but goddammit it's working!  PLEASE let it last FOR EVER AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!