Time Machine restore and now can't open application

Question

Sorry if this is long but I'm not sure how much is relevant to the current problem. It all started when I received an email with a small excel file. The email would not finish downloading and the color wheel of death was spinning on mail and Safari. Eventually Safari came back to life but mail never did. I could not force quit mail so holding down the power button was the next step. Upon re-booting the screens were blue alternating between three shades. Trying over and over gave the same results. Booted into a different hard drive, opened Windows XP on Boot Camp and brought the email in with no problem. Checked it with McAffee and found no problems.
Went back to OX on a hard drive that was fine, used Disk Utilities and attempted to repair disk with no luck. Tried to re-install both 10.5 & 10.6 and neither would install. Erased the hard drive and tried again with no luck. Got a replacement hard drive 1T from Seagate, put in 10.5 DVD and in utilities chose restore from time machine. Went to a restore point a couple of hours before the problem started just to be safe. When restore was complete, about a hour for 350G, I rebooted as directed. The gray screen with the apple logo appeared then darkened and a message appeared directing to shut down using the power button. Several tries produced the same results. I then went to a different hard drive and opened applications for the problem hard drive. It appears the restore brought back everything but almost all application icons are grayed out with a slash across them, not third party stuff either but iTunes, Safari, System Preferences, Mail etc. When clicking on them I get the pop up "You can't open the application ____ because it is not supported on this type of Mac"
Many of the steps described have been tried over and over again with hopes of a different result (Yes, I know that is the definition of insanity). I have even repeatedly switched the hard drives to different bays wondering if it could be a hardware problem. So far I have over 20 hours invested in this problem so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

PCRinAZ wrote:
The gray screen with the apple logo appeared then darkened and a message appeared directing to shut down using the power button.
Is that the one in several languages? If so, that's a *kernel panic.* They're usually hardware, but not always. Disconnect everything, except keyboard and mouse. Reconnect one at a time to see if you can find the culprit.
If that's no help, disconnect everything again and run the Apple Hardware Test, from the separate disc that came with your Mac. Instructions should be printed on it (in very tiny type).
If it passes that, you might want to download and run the Rember app, a free and much more extensive memory test: http://www.kelleycomputing.net/rember/
more kernel panic info:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1392
http://www.index-site.com/kernelpanic.html
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/kernelpanics.html
Several tries produced the same results. I then went to a different hard drive and opened applications for the problem hard drive.
You lost me there. What is the "different hard drive"? A clone? Of the same Mac?
Which is the "problem hard drive," the replaced internal?
It appears the restore brought back everything but almost all application icons are grayed out with a slash across them, not third party stuff either but iTunes, Safari, System Preferences, Mail etc. When clicking on them I get the pop up "You can't open the application ____ because it is not supported on this type of Mac"
This almost sounds like you got PPC stuff restored onto an Intel, or vice-versa.