i only have access to wireless internet at this time in my life...

i have a fresh install of arch on my IBM lenovo thinkpad.

and i have in the past been able to connect with this wifi card (did so during the install) and i shut down and came back to finish the job and haven't been able to.

this is the method i was using:

# ip link set wlan0 up
# wpa_passphrase ESSID "pass" > /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
# wpa_supplicant -B -Dwext -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
# dhcpcd wlan0
# ping www.google.com

and it use to work...

so i tried a different network. this one is open. and i was given to believe that connecting to an open network was even easier:

# iwconfig wlna0 essid "ESSID"
# dhcpcd wlan0
# ping www.google.com

and this has proven to be less than useless...

i can
# iwlist wlan0 -s
and get visuals of available networks. so i know the card can see it.

+++
also having trouble with grub.
as it stands right now i can boot either os (im dualbooting win7 and arch - trying to anyway) with a series of commands.
when i boot the pc it drops strait to grub shell so:

#set root=(hd0,msdos2)
#insmod ntfs
#ntldr /bootmgr
#boot

gets me to the windows side.
and:

#set root=(hd0,msdos3)
#linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux ro root=/dev/sda3
#initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
#boot

gets me to the base install of arch where i can log on as root. and not access the internet

thanks for any and all suggestions if you need more info I'd be more than happy to provide.

Regarding the grub problem i had it too when i had dual hdd setup how many do you have? post the output of "fdisk -l"

The grub issue sounds like the grub configuration was simply never finished, if that distros installer even does that, I don't know, I've never tried to use it. It seems grub is installed and working fine, but there is no valid list of systems for a boot menu. I stick to distros that do most of the heavy lifting for that reason, I just don't have time to be doing what I think the system should do. The wireless issue is harder to sort out. You say it DID work before, which means that once again, a configuration file is probably borked. I can't comprehend a system that doesn't have the ability to just give me a list of networks to connect to and that knows how to connect to them if I have the credentials. Seems like a cart without a horse to me, but that's just my opinion, and you'll hear others just the opposite.

as per request:

Arch Linux 3.6.11-1 ARCH (ttyl)

[root@arch~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 =512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xbbe6b0bc

Device...........Boot......Start......End........Blocks......ID.......System
/dev/sda1..............2048.....2459647.....1228800......7......HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2....*......2459648...505888759...251714556......7......HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3....*....505888760...974247769...234179505.....83......Linux
/dev/sda4.........974247770...976773167.....1262699......5......Extended
/dev/sda5.........974247833...976773167....1262667+.....82......Linux swap / Solaris

Did you recently installed Arch? Just few months ago Arch changed to systemd and if you did the installation prior to that it will give you some headaches.
Also in your partitions you have sda2 and sda3 flagged with *, I'd say remove the flag from sda2 and fix grub

To fix your issues do this
Boot with the Arch CD again and get online that way. ping to google to make sure your are connected
Then mount your root partition
then do
that will give your full access to your installed system and you could install any missing parts for your OS, including a graphical interface and a wireless manager such as WICD or which ever you prefer. I find out during my live session the system lavels the wireless interface as wlan0 but after is installed it name it differently

fix your grub
your might have already done this part on red

Code:

cp /usr/share/locale/en\@quot/LC_MESSAGES/grub.mo /boot/grub/locale/en.mo

Check this link http://lifehacker.com/5680453/build-...in-the-process

awesome! you guys are pure helpful! got a graphical interface and internets woot thanks!!

one quick question. if i have an arch pc and would like to make it dual boot (install windows after linux is installed). could i use this method to restore grub?

Yes you could restore grub the same way you restored the first time. But it would have to be the same version of Arch. If you have pre systemd arch and you are trying to restor it using a post systemd Arch I dont know if it will work.

I recently started using Arch too and so far I havent had any problems.
What software did you put on it? I mean gui and stuff the pacman package manager has unlimited software tons of plugins for everything, multimedia codecs and lot of other stuff.

Enjoy!

I'm a fluxbox user! with nemo as my file manager love the simplicity of it all