Basically I think all the graphical tools use the iw
something commands to do the job (or said the other way around, with those commands you can do pretty much anything your card supports). First check (if
eth1 is not what your wireless card is called, change that appropriately; on some systems it's
wlan0 or something)
if your card (and the driver!) is working all right, you should get some access point information. If you don't get it, then either the card or it's driver is not functioning properly.
After this you can use
iwconfig to actually connect to an ap; read
for all usage information. If you can't do it with those, then I'm afraid the graphical tools can do it neither.