Troubleshooting Configuration menu or 8188 chipset 802.11

[Seekinganswers1]

I purchased a pre-loaded SD card and a 8188 chipset 802.11 dongle that was supposed to be plug-and-play. The seller claims that both were tested prior to shipping. When I do not plug in the dongle and instead use a wired ethernet connection, there is no problem getting to the GUI, proceeding to Midori and onto a Google search. However, when I remove the ethernet cable shut down and start-up with the dongle in a powered USB, Midori always shows an error message. There were no instruction with the dongle; it was supposed to be plug-and-play. The configuration menu has many possible selections. I tried many of them including inserting the SSID, authentication, and encryptation used for my working wifi camera that is set up with the router in my house and works fine on my Dell with Vista. The Raspberry Pi system with this dongle scans but doesn't proceed beyond "scanning.". The dongle is on the same floor and just 2 rooms away from the router. It is powered by a separate USB than are the wireless keyboard and mouse (which work fine). I do not know how to trouble-shoot this situation. Suggestions?

[SN]

you need to set up the wireless connection for your wireless router - set the WLAN SSID, key etc

personally I'd kave just a USB keyboard and dongle plugged in and configure it from the console using a text editor thus avoiding any power / usb issues that may be preventing your setup working

[Seekinganswers1]

Thanks for that fast response and excellent suggestion. I plugged in the ethernet and dongle at the same time and started the system. Confirmed Midori was online. The configuration box contained all values it needed. I saved the configuration, shut-down, removed the ethernet cable and restarted the system. Got error message: "Cannot resolve hostname (www.midori-world.com)." After that I tried another configuration, one that allowed me to enter the password for my router. Same result except the error message can't resolve duckduckgo..... I also notice that there seems to be a second network available that has a different name than my router--don't know what that is about.