Hi! Newbie needs to network! (Just getting acquainted with the syntax and commands and arguments)!

Fedora 6.0 - Gateway laptop . About a year ago the network connections were achieved immediately after installation (duel boot with windows).
I use the laptop primarily offline> and am just now trying to get the network connections back online. Troubleshooting- I messed around so much with all the connections I wonder if I should start at square one and wiping them all out? - Yes? How?

If not- here's the details
have not config'd eth0 lan- did last weekend and was unsuccessful at connecting. I
finally reached the ability to activate the wlan0 but the connection fails.
I have read the startup daemons and notice the 'router discovery' is the only one that failed. My router and wlan0 is set to static IP- I am not entirely sure that I have set the configs on the wlan0 properly- I cannot ping anything other than 127.0.0.1 successfully.

When typing in a terminal ifconfig 192.168.0.x 255.255.255.0 up
I receive an invalid argument. What should I try? I really don't want to have to re-install - and chance wacking out the MBR

etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifconfig-eth0 does not exist
etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifconfig-wlan0 does not exist
etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/keys does not exist

iwconfig wlan0
IEEE 802.11 Mode: Managed Frequency 2.4GHz Access Point: Not Associated
Encryption Key: Off
Rest = 0


*I run my http in ssh (via a service)- Which requires a program ...I wonder if that is the ultimate issue (network config settings aside)?
What are your thoughts?