Restore a user account backed up by time machine to a replacement macbook?

I've searched the forum without finding an answer to this situation, so here's my question:
I setup Time Machine to only backup a teacher's user account on her MacBook because the capacity of the external drive used for her backup was not very large. I excluded all files on the drive, with the exception of her user's home directory. *Her laptop was stolen.*
I just received a replacement laptop, which is the same model, but it is running 10.6.2. The stolen MacBook was running 10.5.8. During initial setup, I attached the drive and attempted to "Restore from TIme Machine backup," but it would not recognize the time machine backup on the attached drive. I also tried renaming the computer to match the name of the stolen MacBook, and tried restoring using the Migration Assistant, which was also unsuccessful.
*Is there anyway that I will be able to restore her user account from the Time Machine backup to her new MacBook?* It doesn't matter if reinstalling 10.5 is the answer, or if I need some 3rd-party software. Is there detailed Time Machine documentation that covers this type of scenario? If there is, I haven't been able to find it.
I also considered allowing the new MacBook to consider the external drive that has the stolen MacBook's backup as its own Time Machine backup (as automatically prompted when plugging the drive into the new MacBook), but I didn't want to futz around and mess things up.
Thank you in advance for helpful replies!

Nova wrote:
I've searched the forum without finding an answer to this situation, so here's my question:
I setup Time Machine to only backup a teacher's user account on her MacBook because the capacity of the external drive used for her backup was not very large. I excluded all files on the drive, with the exception of her user's home directory. *Her laptop was stolen.*
I just received a replacement laptop, which is the same model, but it is running 10.6.2. The stolen MacBook was running 10.5.8. During initial setup, I attached the drive and attempted to "Restore from TIme Machine backup," but it would not recognize the time machine backup on the attached drive. I also tried renaming the computer to match the name of the stolen MacBook, and tried restoring using the Migration Assistant, which was also unsuccessful.
this is because you excluded all the other things from backups. this precludes any kind of automated migration.
*Is there anyway that I will be able to restore her user account from the Time Machine backup to her new MacBook?*
yes, it's possible but you'll have to do it manually. First, make sure that there is no account by the same name already exists on the new mac. this is important.
next, control-click on TM in the dock and select "browse other TM disks". this will let you browse the old TM backups. in the backups select the old home directory in /Users. click on the "gears" action button in the toolbar and select "restore to". choose to restore to the folder /users on your main hard drive. once the restore is complete go to system preferences->accounts and create an account with the same short user name as the name of the home directory you just restored. it will say that a home directory by that name already exists and ask if you want to use it. say "yes".

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    Message was edited by: Pondini

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    10/5/12 2:51:23.572 AM com.apple.backupd[13529]: Found 1437613 files (470.25 GB) needing backup
    10/5/12 2:51:23.573 AM com.apple.backupd[13529]: 564.3 GB required (including padding), 1.5 TB available
    10/5/12 2:51:23.581 AM com.apple.backupd[13529]: Waiting for index to be ready (100)
    10/5/12 3:40:33.297 AM com.apple.backupd[13529]: Copied 763432 files (21.54 GB) from volume Macintosh HD.
    Put the relevant parts in bold.  No messages about why it only backed up 21.54GB when it found 470.25GB that needed to get backed up.
    Does this make sense to anyone??

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