System restore has been a popular feature of the windows operating systems family starting with windows millennium edition and it has been beefed up in windows 7.
Until windows 7, there were no ways to access the files saved as a part of the system restore feature apart from restoring from the restore points. These restore points basically revert any changes made after that restore point was created. But it also meant that you could not decide what needs to be restored and what should not be.
But with windows you can selective restore a deleted or modified document. It can be done by visiting the parent directory where the file or the directory that you wish to restore previously existed. There you can see all the previously saved version along with the date on which it was modified, using which you can pick which version you would like to restore.