Time Machine Locked after MacBook Air reformatted. My MacBook Air was overfull due to an Address book issue (duplication) so after many attempts to clear space, I ended up wiping out the system and reloading Lion.

Time Machine Locked after MacBook Air reformatted. My MacBook Air was overfull due to an Address book issue (duplication) so after many attempts to clear space, I ended up wiping out the system and reloading Lion. This resulted in the Time Machine thinking that it was now connected to a different computer. Apparently this diables the existing information.

Now I can see that the back-ups exist (back to Sept 2012) but they are greyed out, therefore unavailale to restore. Again, this seems like an issue that shouldn't be happening. The whole point of the Time Machine is to enable reinstatement of data after catastrophic failure. What if my computer actually had to be replaced due to a hardware issue? How would I beableto restore anything?

The path already (unsuccessfully) taken;

Open Library on the computer, Open Time Machine, Select Correct date, drill down to correct data you wish to restore, click "Restore".

This did not work because the correct date was greyed out. Restore key was greyed out.