New to wireless does the ethernet cord have to plugged into the back of the wireless router at all times to connect to the internet? why is it called wireless?

How does it work?

The router is wired to your incoming cable or DSL.

Your laptop does not need a cable.

This supposes your laptop has the necessary wireless card.

What hardware are we talking about?

What is the make and model of the router?

What is the make and model of the laptop?

yes the laptop has a intel pro ve100 wifi card. and it's an xp media center laptop and it's connected to a linksys wrt54g router and is also connected via ethernet cable to an xbox 360.

This is the situation the 360 live works fine but the internet does not work on the laptop. now I've tried disconnecting the xbox and still nothing I've tried plugging the network cable directly to the laptop it works fine also I neglected to mention it's connected to a dsl modem. and if I connect the modem directly to the laptop it works.

but the wifi is not working right it says it sees the connection and signal is excellent but once connected the internet doesn't load.

Just to clarify: (leave the xbox out; unless you think it is a factor):

The laptop works with an ethernet cable to the router but does not work without it? Is that correct?

Can you be more specific on the laptop? Dell ####? HP ####? Lenovo ####? etc. ####?

it's a hp pavillion dv6000 it's a 1.8ghz

Sorry I did not see your edit.

Will reshuffle the data.

Is this the laptop?

HP Pavilion dv6000 CTO Notebook PC

looks like it.

Run thru this troubleshooter and see if anything helps.

If not tell us what you tried and what were the results.

Wireless / Networking / InternetHP Pavilion dv6000 CTO Notebook PC

well what I really need is a brief how to on wireless router's does the ethernet cable need to be connected all the time or should the wireless network card detect it without it being connected to the router.