Cannot Connect to Internet

[ShadowM82]

hey everyone. last night i completely wiped one of my hardrives and installed ubuntu 9.10. right now i am using my preferred(for the moment) hard drive running vista. while i was on ubuntu which i like, im a beginner first time i experience ubuntu, i couldnt seemt o connect to the internet. i openend ip the help panel and read all the troubleshooting and steps and well i just cant. the network i am trying to connect to is a wireless one. vista can connect just fine and u can see. however my main problem is wen i do the trouble shooting, it tells me to make sure the device is on, well i assume it is, but how do i check? and then it tells me to do a recongnition of the drivers. i open a terminal and type in "lshw -C network" and it tells me its disabled. so i need to make sure its on. my wireless switch on my inspiron1521 is always on. and the router for the network and modem are always on. i even created the network within ubuntu and i put the passphrase and everything, well wen i mean everything i mean, the SSID. the passphrase(but i do not kno which type of passphrase it is nor do i kno if its infrastructure or ad hoc cuz i dont know the difference). it tells me though that the device is not ready under network manager. please help!!!!!!!!!!!

[NUboon2Age]

If you come back on the forums, I'd be willing to help you out. I see you posted this in networking and wireless also. You might get the best response in Absolute Beginner (though you may not be one).

Here's a place to start: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WiFiHowTo