First Time Trying to Get CentOS 5 to Connect Wirelessly
 

I have a Dynex Enhanced Wireless G Desktop Card in my desktop which I just did a clean install of CentOS5 on. I am very new to Linux and barely know anything about it, so I am wondering where I go to enter my SSID and WEP key to connect wireleslly? I checked in Admin->Network and it appears to see the wireless card as eth1, but I don't see how I can connect wireless. Any help would be greatly appreciated

If you are using GNOME as window manager, you should have near to the clock an icon called NetworkManager, if you do a single click on it, you should see all the wireless network that are near to you. if you are not sure if NetworkManager is installed you can do:

rpm -qa | grep -i networkmanager

if it's stopped, you can start it and enable it at boot up with:

service NetworkManager start; chkconfig NetworkManager on;

if the applet is not near to the clock you can add it to panel running

nm-applet

Let's know how is it going.

I tried what you said and it got the network manager going up in the top right-hand corner of the screen, so I clicked and entered my network name and WEP key and it seems as though the network tries to connect for a bit, and then brings up the Passphrase required screen over and over again. I know I am entering the correct WEP key and network name, so I am guessing that either means the desktop is too far away from the access point or the wireless card isn't picking up the signal. I had XP installed on this before running the same wireless card and it picked up my signal with full-strength, but I don't know if this changes between Linux and Windows.

i don't think so, it should be the same, you can try to do, in a terminal:

iwconfig scan

in order to know how is the level signal in dbs, and the noise. That will be great to check, also you should check the NM WEP connection options such as shared key, etc.

Wireless WEP on Centos
 

I note you are using WEP, it is pretty straightforward. There is an article here at http://minimallinux.blogspot.co.uk/2...-wireless.html which fully covers setting up a wep wireless connection using the command line and a small script to make connection quicker and easier. It is for Centos 6 but should be fine for Centos 5 also.

Using wpa2 requires wpa_supplicant and hostapd so that is not covered in the article but for wep it is fine.