Windows 7 forum: Windows 8 hijacked Windows 7 ???

Okay, I have to explain what happened by repeating what my hb told me so please bare with me as I may have it backwards..

While working on designing a room on a website deco dot com, a message showed up 'windows update'. Then it said 'windows is shutting down'. It then came back up and at some point it said 'configuring (or re-configuring) desktop'. Then it closed down again. When it restarted, it was as if everything had been errased, no more pictures, documents, a totally different desktop picture (I could not see Windows "8" but somehow I suspected WIndows 8 had taken over the laptop).
Hb tried to do a 'restore' but according to him he got the message that there were no restore points, or that there was no such program, not quite sure.

I found restore options, (noticed that this last windows update was noted as 'critical'), I prayed hard and started a system restore to October 11th.

Low and behold, the 'old' desktop showed up, pictures etc. etc. were still there.

But now, I wonder, what the h..l happened?? If I wouldn't have found an option to do a system restore we would have restored the laptop to factory settings, the way it was when bought and a truck load of information would have been lost.

Any idea what could have caused this, and more importantly, to not have this happen again??

And the next obvious question is, what should I do to keep updates of the whole hd?

Thanks!