Wifi problem

[NW]

I use Linux for all my work. My wife has a laptop using Windows XP. She
has picked up a virus, no surprise there then. While this is being
sorted out I have added her as a second user on my laptop which uses
Linux Mint.

I am the main user on this laptop and I can connect via wifi without
any problems, in fact that is what I am using now. However, when I test
the new user, just set up, I find that I cannot connect to the wifi. I
get some message about not finding the IP address. I have not changed
anything, of course.

It seems odd to me that I can log on to wifi automatically as me but not
as the new user. Can anyone suggest what I could do to sort this
please? Do I need to give her root privileges?

Thanks

Neil