I'll have to agree with Snuffy; it appears you have a few issues with either Vista or your backup software or both. Backups are fine as long as there are no issues with the software. Even if you get the backup to work, when it's time to recover your PC due to a crash or for any other reasons, you are going to have corrupted files or may not even be able to use the backup.
Try removing the backup program, it's probably deleting System Restore Points; run Disk Cleanup; Run a register cleaner, you can get one free here:
http://www.eusing.com/free_registry_...y_cleaner.htm; and run Disk Defragmenter, then check to see if System Restore is working.