Windows 7: Win 7 XP mode wont start after updates

Well I am beginning to hate computers again. For NO GOOD REASON the XP mode appears to have crashed upon installation of the automatic updates. It wouldn't shut down virtual machine and won't restart other than a menu telling me the virtual machine failed to start and asking to retry or continue....I hit continue and a small black screen appears and that's it. I see no option to restore to a previous date . Grasping at straws I restored the normal mode to a previous date and it didn't help. Good grief.
I have learned never try to install optional updates in XP mode just stay with the critical updates which I did. This is a windows anytime upgrade to XP mode machine, if that makes any difference and I think it does.
There has to be a way I can restore the virtual machine to a previous date.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks !

The darndest thing...I figured it out by accident because I surely am no expert....when the updates were applied in XP mode it asked me if I wanted to restart and I said yes....it proceeded to shut down XP mode and it was still shutting down after a half hour so I knew something was up with that. I had to power down which I hate to do.
Since then XP mode wouldn't start as I said and there was just the black box... but I could click on the top right of it and shut it down but noticed it was going to hibernate and I thought that was odd. Next time when the black box came up when I restarted it I was able to open the tools on the top and noticed the shut down was set to hibernate....oddly. I changed that to shut down and it shut down completely and I restarted it and XP came up....So that was it, it never shut down and restarted completely which was a glitch in the virtual XP program near as I can tell.
I am more lucky than good to find this.