Restoring user accounts from TM?

Question

I need to reinstall Leopard on one of my internal drives. I have hourly TM backups on another internal drive, with the most recent one from a few minutes ago.
I don't want to do a "total restore", because that might restore whatever files have been causing the systemic problems I've been experiencing (all three user accounts have had the problems).
Is there a way I can use TM to simply restore the user accounts to the freshly installed version of OS X, without bringing any other files over?
Thanks.

Answer 1

sw_i_t_t_e_rs,
OK, based on this, a few things do come to mind.
The first harkens back a long way; we don't see this as much as we used to, so it is no longer as obvious as it used to be, but fonts can still be corrupted, and can still cause problems. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to discover that a bad font, somewhere, is causing these GUI problems.
Based on the fact that all users are experiencing the problem, the most likely place is in the "main" fonts folder. Yep, the Migration Assistant is very likely to have transferred these to the new installation.
Caches can also cause the types of problems you are seeing. Do you know how to find and delete all cache files? Try removing as many as you can, and see where it leads.
The last thing I would look at, in your shoes, is a potential recurring disk error. Since the types of problems you have indicate a system-wide problem, the most obvious candidate would be some system component. That's why you reinstalled, and why anyone would be compelled to do so. Logic would dictate that a reinstallation, especially in conjunction with a format (erasure) of the hard drive, would fix such a problem.
In some cases, logic would be wrong. Let's assume that the problem began with a disk error, and some critical system files were damaged; call them "file A" and "file B." If said disk error was the result of a bad block on the hard drive, a standard format and reinstallation would not necessarily correct the problem. You see, the reinstallation would be most likely to write the same files to the same blocks on the hard drive. File A and file B would be written to the same bad block(s), and the problem would recur.
The answer, then, is to "zero" the drive, thereby "mapping out" any potential bad blocks. I once worked with a machine (an iMac) that had a bad installation. I was told by the owner that, upon running a specific update, the machine "crashed." OK, managed to make a backup of the user data, then I formatted the hard drive and reinstalled OS X with the intention of returning the user data. However, upon running all the updates myself, the machine failed at the exact same place that it had for the owner. Hmmm. My next step was to try again, only "zeroing" the drive this time. The machine still runs happily today.
The trick to getting those bad blocks mapped out is to select the entire drive (not the named volume that appears indented underneath the drive in Disk Utility), and to choose the "Zero All Data" option in the "Security Options..." dialogue sheet. I would only try this as a last resort, after I had ruled out bad fonts, bad cache files, etc.
Who knows, your sleep problems could be related, too.
Scott
EDIT: I'm going to add one more thing to my "before you format again" list... It wouldn't hurt to run the commands I have already given to correct any ownership problems. As I mentioned, caching could be involved in the types of problems you are seeing (Leopard's Finder makes heavy use of caching). The types of potential ownership problems that I am targeting with those commands (specifically, group ownership) could lead to trouble writing cache files properly. Run those commands before you do anything else.