inspiron 130 not connecting

Service Tag?
What happens when you 'View available wireless networks' ?
If you have WEP then you need to provide the KEY (use upper case for any letters).
You could try making the setting 'b' rather than mixed mode (auto)

As mentioned above, you should right click on the wireless networks icon in the system tray and select "View available wireless networks". A new window will appear showing the available wireless networks within range.

You will need to select the SSID (Network Name) that you set up your access point with. If you have set up security (highly recommended) on your access point then you will need to enter your WEP or WPA key in order to associate with the access point.

If you're not seeing anything at all then make sure your wireless card is enabled. I'm not sure about the Inspirion, but on my Latitude I need to hit Fn-F2 in order to enable/disable the wireless card.

hi   thank you for your help    when i view wireless networks it says windows cannot configure this wireless connection    now im at dell wireless card utility   when i press fn and f2  the towe comes with a red circle and a line through it   help!!!!!

where is the option to change setting to b

The tower with the line through it means that the wireless card is disabled. You want to toggle it so that you can see the tower, but no line through it.

Are you using security / encryption on your access point? You may want to temporarily set the access point to no encryption and then see if you can connect. If that works then you can turn encryption back on and reconfigure the client.

If your access point is using WPA/WPA2 encryption (preferred method) then you may have to download a patch to enable WPA on XP.

if it says "windows cannot configure my wireless....", don't worry. this is perfectly normal. this simply means that the dell utility for the wireless card is in charge of wireless networking on your system. your option: disable dwlan utility - start, all programs, dell wireless, double click on dell dwlan card utility, on new window, uncheck "let this tool manage my wireless network settings". click apply and/or ok. then enable windows to configure wireless. (ensure that wzc has been started). sometimes after disabling dwlan utility, wireless zero configuration is automatically enabled.

wzc is "Wireless Zero Configuration" and is a Service which runs

Get to "Properties" of your wireless and look for "Advanced"
In one of those places, somewhere along the left-hand side once you click on that to go to "Advanced" look in the upper left for the check box "Allow Windows to manage wireless" and make sure it has a CLICK / check-mark there (x)