I have Linux Mint Maya installed on my Toshiba satellite laptop. I can connect to unsecured wireless networks fine, but when trying to connect to a WPA secured network (in a cafe) I enter the correct password but it doesn't connect. I don't know why, and I don't want to go changing settings without being sure of what I'm doing.

I also am having trouble with my Huawei e173 usb 3g dongle from Orange. I have the updated usb_modeswitch, and my specific dongle is noted in the list of supported dongles, but I can't figure out where to go from there. I have read lots of threads about this, and I am not sure what to do, because everybody seems to have a problem that is slightly different than my own, or is solving their problem by getting the most up to date modeswitch installed.

What model toshiba satellite?
Also what os are you using?

OS: Linux Mint 13 Maya
Toshiba Satellite was custom job from factory in 2009. I can't seem to find which exact model of Satellite it was built from. I replaced the hard drive in January 2011. CPU is 2x Intel core 2 duo T6400 @2.00 GHZ. Wifi network adapter is Intel Wifi link 5100.

if you tried it in GUI there is an inbuilt app called network manager where you just choose the country, service provider and apn . Although i found the older Huawei e160 usb 3g dongle from orange more adaptive to different pcs.

I tried that, but it doesn't even recognize my dongle as a modem, just as a storage device. And in the network manager New Mobile Broadband connection window, the dropdown menu for 'create a connection for this mobile broadband device:' is grey, which I assume means it doesn't recognize the dongle.

Thanks for the link. That all looks a bit out of my pay grade. I'm a real beginner with this, so it may take some time to work up to that point, because I don't really get what a lot of that is.