Win 8.1 and lost system restore files

Greedings.

I'm using an Inspiron 3721 laptop with windows 8, x64, 8GB RAM. Last night i upgraded to win8.1. Since then i'm having problems with my Autodesk's software, Autocad 2011 and Autocad Architecture 2013, both of which worked on win8. Now they won't even start. After searching in the web and taking all the possible actions (upgrades, updates, VGA upgrades, everything) i decided to use the Dell recovery App and recover to a point before the upgrade of windows. The thing is that all my restore points seem to have been deleted! There's only one, today's afternoon, that is after the windows upgrade. Is it possible that they were deleted by upgrading to win8.1?!!!! I can understand being deleted in the windows' own "system recovery" application , but since this is an other company's application (Dell's) how is it acceptable to be affected by Microsoft's issues? Shouldn't there be precautions about it? After all if this is the way things are, why should someone use Dell's respective application since it is depended on Microsoft's "good will" to allow it function? I really wish and hope i'm wrong here but if this is the way things are, i think it's a pity and shame for Dell.

Is there any way for me to recover to a point before the OS upgrade?