connecting to internet on new hard drive

Are you using wired or wireless as access to the internet?

Either way, going into your Network Manager and making sure that the box that says "Connect automatically" is checked.

If you have a wireless internet connection, you may need a driver, depending on what wireless chipset it is using.

If wireless and it's an internal adapter, running "lspci" in a terminal (without quotes) and telling us what the line that contains the word wireless or wifi says would help us point you to the correct driver.

If your using a wireless usb adapter, use lsusb instead of lspci and tell us what the line that contains wireless or wifi says.

Edit: You may also want to give us a rundown on the hardware on your laptop. How old is it? What kind of processor (AMD or Intel)? Do you know what kind of type of processor (P4, i5, or AMD model)? How much memory? etc.etc.

If you did not have a network manager, you would not see the network icon on the top right panel.

Can you post a picture of your panel with the network icon? Want to see actually what it looks like.