Time machine does not recognize backups

I need to do a restore because after a logic board replacement my apps are not showing as registered, in other words they are all asking for serial numbers. I would like to see if I can use time machine to restore these apps. I don't want to do a full restore using the OS X install CD because it says it erases the contents of the volume. I'm assuming that means teh system and apps will be restored but I'll lose my files.
I can;t get time machine to recognize backups and I found this...
Symptoms
In the Mac OS X 10.5 Time Machine "time travel" window, past backups may not appear if your computer name includes certain characters.
Products Affected
Resolution
Check your computer name in Sharing preferences. Make sure the computer name only includes ASCII characters from following set and is not blank (no matter which Mac OS X language version you are using):
0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
so I changed my computer name accordingly but the backup folder in Backups.backupdb still has the old name with a character not allowed. Nothing I do to change priveleges allows me to rename the folder!
Advice needed! Thanks!

It is not a simple matter of the computer name. A simple rename of the backup doesn't do it. It my be necessary but its not the obstacle.
The MAC address of the old board is in the Extended Attributes (EAs -"invisible" metadata) for the old board backups and the MAC address of the new board is in its EAs. If they MAC address in the EA doesn't match the MAC address of the machine that Time Machine is trying to backup it won't do it and it will start a new backup. That certainly appears to be the situation you face.
You can see this by a simple check in terminal. Below is a sample I have two machines name Juvenal and Pliny. The xattr command with the -l option lists all the extended attributes of a file. For the backups of my systems it returns a value that is, in fact, the MAC address of that machine. If the MAC address of the target and source don't match Time Machine won't do the backup and will start a newbackup'
~ $xattr -l /Volumes/Backup\ of\ Juvenal/Backups.backupdb/Juvenal
com.apple.backupd.BackupMachineAddress:
0000 30 30 3A 31 64 3A 34 66 3A 34 61 3A 66 31 3A 64 00:1d:4f:1a:f4:d6
0010 36 00
~ $xattr -l /Volumes/Backup\ of\ Pliny/Backups.backupdb/Pliny
com.apple.backupd.BackupMachineAddress:
0000 30 30 3A 31 62 3A 36 33 3A 33 66 3A 66 64 3A 37 00:1b:63:3f:fd:76
0010 36 00
The actual path to your backups will depend on your configuration and whether or not the backup is on a locally attached drive or not. Mine - in the example above - are on a TC and the results occur after opening the sparse bundles.
The solution I pointed you do is trying to deal with this and change it so the MAC addresses match.
I agree this is a known problem and warrant an official fix which should not be complicated.

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