Yeah, definitely need to walk again for a little while.
A month ago I talked with a salesman at Best Buy about laptops and wireless -- he said it was hard to set up and suggested if I bought the laptop from them to pay extra and let the BestBuy technician set it up for me.
At the time, I thought he was just trying to get a bigger sale price! Now I understand....(but I still would hate to pay that extra $150).
Wait.
Disconnect the cat-5 cable from the laptop.
Under start ! settings ! network conditions, go to the "wireless networks" tab and hit the "refresh" button to see if anything is available. If something--anything--is listed, hit "configure" and then "ok."
I remember some wireless devices can't "hear" a hotspot until this is done. It's part of WinXP as I understand it.