LinuxQuestions.org - Permissions are denied in my Slackware

I'm dual booting between Slackware 12.2 and Windows Vista. Vista was installed first and everything works fine (well at least I can go online). I've been reading a lot of forums and troubleshooting my networking issue but every single time I try something that works for everyone else the permissions are denied for me. For instance: if I use the command line /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf or /etc/resolv.conf I am denied access to configure my network settings? Why is that?

I'd like (love) to go online with my new OS. I just installed Slackware 12.2 on my Toshiba Satellite A135 PSAD0U-03500P Notebook. I have Vista on my /dev/sda drive 111GB Slackware is on the second part of my drive /dev/sdb with 111GB. I may have given you more information than you need but it's to hopefully show that my motherboard and other peripheral devices are compatible with Linux. Before I downloaded slack I ran Belarc Advisor on vista to get most of the configuration that I needed. On the communications part I had this:

Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945 ABGNetwork Connection

* Auto IP Address: 192.168.1.101/24
* Gateway: 192.168.1.1
* DHCP Server: 192.168.1.1

and my network DNS Servers are: 208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

I have more info about it but with all of this I still cannot configure the network. I'm pretty sure there are some special drivers I need to install but don't know how to go about doing it. I have an excutable file of wicd on my external harddrive but I don't know how to get to it using linux; if I'm at all on the right track anyway?