Time machine help

i am not sure if this is the place for this but i need some help. my hard drive crashed on my ibook G4, it was well used so not too worried, i put in a new one. i had backed up my computer using time machine 2 days before. now that i have a new hard drive and basically have a new computer, i want the stuff i had backed up back on my computer. the girl at the store said just plug time machine in and it will do the rest. not so much. i live in taiwan so i think something got lost in translation. my understanding is that my computer..ie: everything was backed up.. preferences, photos.. movies.. desktops.. all that.. but i cant seem to get it all back. i used migration program and that got alll my applications back but that is not what i am want most. i want all my pictures and prefs. i can go into my last back up and go into pictures folder but it says i dont have access to these files. is there somehting i am missing.. can some one please help me how to get my old computer back on my new hard drive?

This should help

Mac OS X 10.5 Help: Recovering your entire system

thanks for the info. though it wasnt needed. i am not sure what i did or how it happened. all i did was open iTunes and it needed to update. so i did, restarted and i came back to look and everything, i mean everything.. is back to the way it was. thanks for the help anyway. though that way is much easier. funny how when i tried to find out the info all i got was to use migration thing app in utilities folder.