Why are some of my Time Machine windows greyed out?

When I enter Time Machine, some of the windows (say Finder windows) are white and I can access them for a restore. Others are greyed out (actually a purple color) and I cannot access them, even though they are relevant to my User files i.e. not someone else's. There are two standard users on this laptop, plus a User with Administrator rights plus a guest User.
The same pattern of windows appears in each of the other Users.
Not a desperate issue at the moment, but I am interested to know why.
Paultageist
(my present kit is 15" Macbook Pro, OS X Lion, 500Gb Time capsule, and wireless network.)

The unavailable snapshots don't include the folder from which you're entering Time Machine. Start from the top-level view in the Finder that shows all volumes connected to the computer. Enter Time Machine and then descend to the folder you want to restore from.

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