Acer aspire 5310 cannot connect to net...

i got the laptop for xmas! it says it has a 802.11b/g WLAN, it has a celeron m inside and its on vista basic, i am with tiscali and got a netgear dg834gv4 wireless modem router from them. i have installed it with the disc supplied and my network shows up when you search for available networks but when you try to connect it says unable to connect, i click to diagnose the problem and it says it cannot resolve the issue as it doesnt know what is wrong. i spent ages on the phone to tiscali who had me look in device manager and asked if i could see any thing called 'wireless' card and i said no cause its called a broadcom 802.11g network adapter, the nice man on the fone got a bit annoyed with me and told me i had to buy an adapter and would not help me any further! all my friends said that this broadcom thing is the wireless adapter and its built in to my laptop. help i am so confused i am really very bad with computers when they go wrong, i am also getting quite frustrated!