Time machine cant restore my old files

Question

I erased my hard-drive 2 days ago and i have been unable to restore my old files backed up with time machine. Every time i tried to restore the Address book or i Cal, it always says that i already have the same file and if i want to keep both or replace the old one. And if i do replace it, it seems to work but my Address book remain empty.
When i go through my backed files with the time machine machine, i can see some of my old data but i just dont how to restore them. Can anybody tell the right way of restoring the i Cal and the address book??
thanks

Answer 1

I had something simlar and discovered that the permissions on my backup disk we're completely and remarkably (in that the new owner or the entire backup was a non-administrator user on my system) changed.
My symptoms were like yours: backups from before a certain date not highlighted in white (i.e. not available for browsing via Time Machine).
My restore became a nightmare of knife-and-fork work. Very disappointing.
Please try this:
Browse your backup disk (i.e. the disk you pointed Tome Machine at) with Finder or Terminal. Down a couple of levels you'll come to a folder containing one subfolder for every backup taken. Go to one of the backups you cannot open via Time Machine (so any 12th Jan backup name will start with "2008-01-12...", and so forth).
Browse into the backup folder. The sub folders to open are:
1. the name of your hard drive
2. Users
In the ./Users folder there'll be a folder in there with your username. I f if, like mine, the permissions have been hosed then you'll be able to tell pretty easily.
If you're using Finder then do a Get Info on the "yourusername" folder and tell us what permissions are set. If you're using Terminal, do an ls -la on the same directory and report back.