i just completely restored my mac and i have all my apps and everything on my time machine...how can i get my mac to the backup that i setup..also my install disc is leopard and i backed up using snowleopard
In other words, you have re-installed Mac OS X on your Mac and your Time Machine HDD has the backup of the Mac before you reinstalled Mac OS X and now you want to get the data from the Time Machine HDD to your fresh installed Mac OS X (which has just the basic data it came with)?
In other words, you have re-installed Mac OS X on your Mac and your Time Machine HDD has the backup of the Mac before you reinstalled Mac OS X and now you want to get the data from the Time Machine HDD to your fresh installed Mac OS X (which has just the basic data it came with)?
Go to Applications, open the Utilities folder, double click on Migration Assistant and choose the Time Machine HDD as your source of migrating data from.
Ah, I now saw your edit of your OP. If you have Leopard installed, and your backup is containing Snow Leopard, you might get into trouble when migrating applications. Data, like your files and folders in your Home folder, should be fine though.
And whatever caused you to re-install your OS, might come along, if you migrate all the settings you backed up. You can manually copy data from the Time Machine folder called "backups.backupdb".