System Restore not completing

Hi all!
I could really do with some advice here...

I am currently in the process of carrying out a system restore and have been for several hours now. The process has been running for 3 hours now and indicates that it is still "restoring files..." And shows no sign of ever finishing. I am not at home so I will need to unplug the laptop eventually and ultimately allow it to power down mid process.
I have three questions:

1. Is there a safe way of ending the process? There is no stop/cancel option, however I still appear to be able to use the System Recovery Options in the behind window. (Shutdown and restart buttons are present).

2. What will likely happen when I do need to end the process? Will this cause irreparable damage to my laptop?

3. Is it likely that the process should be taking this long? Should I make arrangements to leave it running for an extended period of time? I have run system restore before but it has always completed within 30mins or so in the past.

I am carrying out a restore because my laptop refused to start. I am concerned that I might have done damage whilst running a pc tweaking software immediately before the problem arose. I will be making another post shortly to try and resolve that issue separately.

Thanks in advance,

SJ.

Didn't see this thread before posting in your other thread. Sorry.

If system restore isn't completing in a timely manner (probably no more than 30 minutes - my machines finish in about 10 minutes) I'd do a hard shut down using the power button. The only time you should press and hold the power button is if your computer is locked up and otherwise unresponsive. A ten-second press will usually force a "hard" power-off, after which you should wait until the hard drive stops spinning completely before turning the machine back on.

How Not to Shut Down Your PC

The next time you turn on your computer you'll probably get a message that Windows failed to shut down properly and it will want to do a check disk. I suggest letting the check disk run (could take more than an hour depending on disk size and any damage that needs to be fixed.)

With all the problems your machine is experiencing, if the suggestions in your other post don't fix things, you might consider a repair install

Repair Install