Help with Wireless Laptop

[rockpiler]

Hello - I am sorry if this question sounds silly but I am not technically minded and I am baffled by trying to set up a laptop. I have a desktop pc which is connected to a landline via a modem and my daughter has bought a laptop which she wants to connect up wirelessly to this. Yesterday I set up my desktoop pc via the router and got that working and connecting to the internet and so on. I am a little baffled that the modem I have been using up to now seems to be redundant - should that be the case? My daughter then tried to set up her laptop to connect to the router. Should she have used the same software I used to connect my pc and also had the cable plugged into the laptop via the router or should she be trying to just connect without the laptop being attached to the router? To me it does not seem possible to tell the laptop how to find the router without having the cable there initially. Sorry if this sound confusing - it is because I am confused. Thanks for any help you can give me.

[pharoah]

ok first thing click on your wireless icon on the right hand side near the clock and a screen like this should open

[pharoah]

ok from that screen hit properties then this screen should pop up click on the center tab see what wireless id shows up there.should be the ssid from your router.at this point hit the add button,and put in the name of the ssid from the router .

[pharoah]

ok final step you will see the box that says network name (ssid) that is where you type in the name of your wireless network and simply hit ok you will also need to type in the encryption key if you have that enabled

this is a wireless guide i wrote on another forum hope it helps.