Wireless Woes

[skeeter33]

Hello! I just got a Asus U81 laptop today and I wanted to try out Kubuntu 9.04 on it. I installed it, but once the installation was complete I realized the wireless/ethernet wouldn't work. My house's wireless network, WEP, shows up but it can't connect to it. The wireless card is Intel WiFi Link 5100 AGN, and the ethernet is Atheros AR8131 PCI-E. Here is the output I got from the ifconfig:

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:52 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:52 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:3288 (3.2 KB) TX bytes:3288 (3.2 KB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:22:fa:5d:66:ec
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wmaster0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-22-FA-5D-66-EC-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

I tried to install dsiwrapper and the drivers for XP's 64 bit version, but I don't know if it worked/did anything. I'm at a loss here. I don't know what else to do. Note: I am a complete Kubuntu user. Thank you for any help you can provide!

[skeeter33]

Thank you for the rely! I have reinstalled Kubuntu again since I think I may have messed something up with my earlier fiddling and I wanted a clean slate to work from. Not sure how to get to the system>>preference>>network connections menu you mentioned. Wait....nevermind. *face plam* I think I got it now!! Thank you! I can't believe it was a simple proxy problem and not the driver/hardware problem I'd been approaching it as.

EDIT: Now that I switched the proxy => "Automatically detect proxy configuration" the internet will connect, but it seems reeeally slow when it shouldn't be. Ideas anyone?