I reinstalled, moving my laptop closer to my router, and it worked.

I was not very far away. Also, my laptop could see my wireless network. But for some reason, I could not connect.

After connecting to the network, the laptop works further away from the router now.

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
        wpa-ssid mywap
        wpa-psk "mySecretPassPhrase"
        metric 1

The above uses a passphrase in  plain ASCII, if you want more security, then use wpa_passphrase, which will create an encrypted passphrase. You can redirect its output to a text file and paste the passphrase component in to your 'interfaces'  file - see 'man wpa_passphrase'.

Depending on the type of installation you have done you may well find that network-manager has been installed. If so, you would be better off using that. As root try typing nmtui; if a dialog window appears then you can use this to set up your network. However, you will need to remove the entries in your 'interfaces' file first.

Good luck!

I first tried to install with the graphical installer. I did not have an ethernet cable attached, and I could not get past the network sign-in. It saw my network, and I feel certain I entered the network password correct (tried several times) but it would not connect.

I dropped back to the standard install, and installed without a network.

I was able to install. And later I set it up to work with the physical cable connected. But I don't know how to get the wireless network connected.

My system finds eth0 and wlan0. I have both setup the same in /etc/network/interfaces. I have them set to dhcp.

allow-hotplug eth0
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp

# ifup wlan0
ifup: interface wlan0 already configured

Can I get some help getting my wireless working? Thanks in advance.