How can I reinstall Mountain Lion on new hard drive?

I'm in a Catch 22 with my new hard drive and am fed up with the whole Apple makes it easy crap.

Installed a new hard drive and extra RAM as old one (2008) was failing.

Can't reload my recently purchased OS X (Mountain Lion) because it's not on a disc. Can't obtain it from Mac App store as my disc-loaded OS X 10.6.3 ( Snow Leopard) can't access Purchases.

Can't download and install OS X 10.6.8 until I've loaded 10.6.7 .....until I've loaded 10.6.6 ....until I've loaded 10.6.5

Have downloaded 10.6.5 and it's f******* disappeared without installing ( and it took 3 hrs to down load). All that remains of about 1Gb download is a 20kb disc image.

I've tried to reinstall my OS X updates from TIme Machine but can't find out how to do it.

And to add insult to injury none of my Time Machine applications or files will load altho they seem to exist in Mac Back Up

I'm tempted to throw in the towel, sell my iphone and ipad and just go back to Microsoft. I'd waste less time

If only it was that simple.

I downloaded the 10.6.8 combo update overnight and it refused to load. In the Downloads folder it's listed as a 96.8 Mb Safari download but when I click on it, it appears as a 3.2 kb disc image which can't be opened. I wondered if I needed the earlier updates so I downloaded 10.6.5; exactly the same thing happened. The download disappears and all I've got is a disc image.

My alternative plan was to look in Time Machine for OS X updates but I don't know where to look.

I'm completely stuck

No, because I'd already started downloading it from the Apple site at http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1400 before you replied to my post and gave the link. I presumed that Apple would provide a kosher download.

I'll try again from your link and see if I have more luck - that will take another 4 hours with my stone age broadband.

Mike

You might find this hard to believe but my wireless "broadband" speed is 0.65 Mbps. I could probably increase it by a few % if I used a wired connection.

I had the telephone engineer at home a few months ago, because I was having phone & broadband drop outs, and he reckoned that the best I could get would be < 1Mbps. I'm at the end of a long copper phone cable.

Broadband is terrible in this part of the world; altho I'm only a few miles from a major urban centre the phone company has no real incentive to run fibre-optic cable to outlying villages. So we're stuck at snail's pace.

I upgraded to Mountain Lion just last month and don't recall it taking too long. It was the upgrade that forced me to buy a new hard drive as it pushed the old one into frequent crashes.

I'm running a desktop. My nearest Apple Store is only about 1 hr away but how can I use their network? Life would be a lot simpler if Apple sold OS X on discs as well as via download but perhaps Californians expect everyone else to live in a world of constant sunshine and super-fast broadband.

I feel like I'm playing a game of Snakes and Ladders against Apple; nothing works first time and every step forward is met with another obstacle.

I've downloaded and installed OS X 10.6.8 - thanks for all of the help with this so far!

Now I can open the Mac App store and download Mountain Lion ( before I can even think of restoring my files from time Machine)

but...

when I sign in to Mac App Purchases and press the dark grey Download button it doesn't start the download.

The button turns pale grey, the little grey spinning clock icon turns for about 30 seconds and then it stops. The download button turns dark again and that's it. Tried it a couple of times but it won't start to download.

but ...

I've closed and restarted the machine and it finally seems to be downloading. Hopefully it will be on my desktop after I've had a night's sleep.

Thanks again for all of the help.