Hard Drive Failure can't reinstall OS

I have a MacBook Pro 17" early 2011 model, I believe it's a 8,3. I was running Mountain Lion, which I upgraded to early this year. Recently, my hard drive failed and was forced to put a new one in as a result. I'm unable to locate the original disc that came with my laptop therefore unable to boot to that particular disc. I've tried several times to put up holding the option key and connecting to Internet Recovery and reformatted my drive several times to MACOSX Extended (Journaled). Everytime I am prompted for the options screen and hit the reinstall OS the computer attempts to contact apple and quits with an error message that it's unable to load the OS. I've tried to also use time machine and also get an error message that is incorrect stating the hard drive is not large enough for the image which is half the size of the hard drive. I've also made a image of the Mountain Lion download from the App Store and tried to boot holding down the C key but end up getting a flashing folder with a ? mark inside of it. If I go in to the Disk Utility when prompted after holding down the option key and entering internet recovery the hard drive shows up and is healthy and displays the correct available size of the hard drive. I've even attempted to use a Snow Leapord Disc that I had from my MacPro purchase.