Restoring my Macbook Pro system to a Time Machine back up?

Due to having issues turning on/off my a fairly new laptop, I had to reinstall my OS on to it. Before this occured I was backing up my computer onto a WD external hard drive via time machine. Now that the OS is reinstalled and my Macbook Pro is working fine, I am wanting to restore my system, preferances, everything on to it. I have tried using the Command-R at start up, the Migration Assistants and Time Machine its self to try and restore my system. But it would either not recoginze the fact that I have the external hard drive plugged in and there ready to go, or if it does recoginize it, it would not recoginze that it has any back ups on it to restore to. When I go to see the contants of the external hard drive from like the desktop/Finder it shows that it has a file of backups with contents in these folders of backups. Is it still possiable to restore my system and not have to start from the ground up? and how so? or at least use/retrive varies things from the backups if not the whole system??
Anything would be great, I don't want to loose everything and start from the ground up, when I had been backing up my computer.

Hello ANDREW KC NICHOLAS CSERESNYES,
Sorry to hear that you have been having trouble restoring your Time Machine backup to your MacBook Pro. I understand that you have tried a few methods including Migration Assistant, but your drive does not show up. In Migration Assistant, the drive may not show up as "Time Machine backup" and might just be called Macintosh HD:
The following article outlines what you should see in the "Time Machine or other disk migration" section:
How to use Migration Assistant to transfer files from another Mac
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4889
I hope this helps!
Best,
Sheila M.

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Hi,
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Hi djousma,
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