You have to re-create the old user.
i.e. I have a new AlBook. I could create a New user with the same user name as Old User that existed on my prior TiBook (i.e. the one whose Old User folder I copied before Apple made me send in the whole TiBook as part of the replacement program).
Creating a New User with the same name as the old User, and copying over all the new files, however, will not allow the old Preferences and permissions to actually work properly, even if the name is the same.
The New user needs to be empowered to take over the identity of the old one, and that can only be done from within the Root User, using commands in Terminal mode. Effectively, you go in at the much-to-be-feared "root" level, throw away all your User files, and then copy over (from an external drive) the Old User file you aim to restore.
To get that old user ot work, you use terminal commands to make that Old user a new user on the current machine. It gives me the creeps to go mucking around in Root like this (I am really ignorant of the basic UNIX core of OS X) but if you don't have your old computer and the brand new one tied together by firewire, then this is how Apple says to do it.
Here is what I can paste in from the relevant knowledge base:
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These steps assume that you backed up as described in Section II above. It is additionally assumed that you have just erased the hard disk and reinstalled Mac OS X, or that you have purchased a new computer. In either case, you would start at the Mac OS X Setup Assistant.
Important: When recreating users in Steps 1 and 4 below, be sure that the short names are typed exactly as they were when you made the backup.
1. In the Setup Assistant, create a user account with the same user name and short name that you previously used for your Admin user. If you only had one user (yourself) on the computer, you were the Admin user and may skip to Step 5 after completing the Setup Assistant.
2. After completing the Setup Assistant, choose System Preferences from the Apple menu.
3. Choose Users from the View menu.
4. For each user that you backed up, create a new user account using the same user name and short name.
5. Log in as the root user. For more help with this step, see technical document 106290: "Mac OS X: About the root User and How to Enable It".
6. Click the Finder icon in the Dock.
7. Choose Go To Folder from the Go menu.
8. Type "/Users/" and click Go.
9. Drag the contents of the Users folder to the Trash.
10. From your backup storage location or disk, drag the contents of the backed-up Users folder into the empty Users folder on the Mac OS X disk.
11. Put away or eject your backup disk.
12. Open Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/).
13. Type: chown -R <username> /Users/<username>
Important: In this step and in Step 15 below, you would replace "<username>" with the actual user short name, which should match exactly the name of the user folder. So for a user named Jeanne DuBois with a short name of "jeanne", you would type:
chown -R jeanne /Users/jeanne
14. Press Return.
15. Type: chgrp -R staff /Users/<username>
16. Press Return.
17. Repeat Steps 13 through 16 for each additional user that you created in Steps 2 through 4, if applicable.
18. Quit Terminal.
19. Choose Log Out from the Apple menu.
20. Log back in as your normal Admin user.
21. Be sure that you can access your files. If you cannot access your files, log back in as root and repeat steps 13 through 20.
22. Disable root login as described in technical document 106290.
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