new hard drive

i have a macbook 2006 model just put a new hard drive in.i have never done anything like this ever. i backed up entire system on external hard drive via time capsule.replaced hard drive no problem. turned machine on and also had hard drive plugged in. the screen shows a blinking folder with a ? mark in it. i was able to get screen to come up after using my sons system disk for mac book pro( dont have orignal disk with system). i thought i found my way thru time capsule to transfer data back but cant get it to come back out of installer. i was able to go by apple store a distance away from my house and he talked like all i needed to do was back up data ,switch drive, rebute transfer data back over.????????? thanks for any help

What OS are you running on your MB? What OS was the MBP disc that you used? I'm gonna guess that they probably have to be the same.

I'd also recommend connecting to MB to the Time Capsule via ethernet cable. I could see a wireless restore taking quite a while.

The first time you turn the MB on after swapping the drive, you'll need to boot from the DVD. Among the options that appear should be the option to restore from Time Machine backup. You just let it do it's thing and then reboot.

not sure what version of 10.5 but i used a version of 10.6 to try to reinstall and it appeared to let me in time capsule to transfer.but it said it could run the 10.6 version.but from what i am understanding i need the original operating system disk in the maching when i reboot.

I swapped a HD using Time Machine and ran into a somewhat similar, but not identical, issue. I had 10.5 installed and backed up via TM. At some point I upgraded to 10.6. The TM backup updated itself to 10.6 without me starting a new backup. Never thought about it until I swapped drives months later.

The original restore discs that came with the machine were 10.5 so I used them to restore from TM to the new drive even though my TM backup was 10.6. Everything copied over, but it just wouldn't boot right. Turned out that I needed a 10.6 disc after all. I inserted a 10.6 disc and updated over top of the TM backup which was installed to the drive using the 10.5 disc. Rebooted and it worked.

There are two morals to the story. 1. If you update to a new OS, start your TM backup over. 2. You'll probably need discs with the same OS as you are trying to restore.