Wireless driver installed but not working

Have you tried removing the Windows wireless driver and the ndiswrapper software, then using the standard ath5k/madwifi drivers to run your hardware? By the way, you shouldn't be using WEP 40/128bit encryption, you should be at least using WPA or WPA2 because it has been shown that WEP can be cracked in under five minutes using freely available software from the Internet.

first thanks for your reply,
also thank you for your advice concerning the security of my wireless network.
I will take it in serious consideration,

I never tried madwifi drivers, but this source makes me believe this would not really work:
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-329384.html

I reread my above post and I find this rule strange:
device (0846:6A00) present (alternate driver: rtl8187)

rtl8187 is this the right driver or some native driver trying to interfere with ndiswrapper?
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=329299&highlight=WG111v2
in above thread they blacklist this driver,
should I try doing te same?

thanks already

the native rtl8187 driver should work.
I did find a bug report on that driver. Have you tried the rtl8187 with Wicd?
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/225851
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/231662
I have read that in Ubuntu it will work without the light coming on.

Since you have already installed the windows driver and ndiswrapper I would first start by trying to blacklist the native driver.

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

add these and save

#wg111v2 conflicting drivers
blacklist islsm_pci
blacklist islsm
blacklist islsm_usb
blacklist prism2_usb
blacklist rtl8187
blacklist r8187b
blacklist r8187

also you can unload the module with

sudo rmmod rtl8187

restart the wireless network

ifconfig wlan0 down
ifconfig wlan0 up

If that does not work I would give the native driver another go. You will have to remove the changes you made to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf. Also you will have to remove ndiswrapper and 'modprobe rtl8187' to reload that module. Also updating to a newer kernel might help.
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.30.5/

first thanks alot for the 'ready to try' well advised/explained answer.

As adviced I tried the blacklist approach first:

opened the terminal:
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
and an empty file opened.
I pasted:
#wg111v2 conflicting drivers
blacklist islsm_pci
blacklist islsm
blacklist islsm_usb
blacklist prism2_usb
blacklist rtl8187
blacklist r8187b
blacklist r8187
and saved & closed

following errormessages showed up in terminal:
** (gedit:5688): WARNING **: Could not write gedit state file:
Failed to create file '/root/.gnome2/gedit-2.M7VU0U': No such file or directory

I/O error : No such file or directory
I/O error : No such file or directory

the command ndiswrapper -l still gives aternate driver rtl8187
a bit dissapointed I tried to unload the module:
sudo rmmod rtl8187
answered by an error: ERROR: Module rtl8187 does not exist in /proc/modules
well seriously troubled I tried to restart my wireless network
ifconfig wlan0 down
ifconfig wlan0 up
both again answered with an errormessage: SIOCSIFFLAGS: Permission denied

Hope you can help me out here,
thanks already

OddLink,

if ndiswrapper -l still shows the hwre and driver present then pls do the following

- first, uninstall wicd via synaptic
- also via synaptic do a search for ndis and check if both ndiswrapper packages show as installed
- thirdly, the network-manager and network-manager-gnome must be installed - pls check it also via synaptic

if all above satisfied pls go to system-->admin-->network and highlight the wireless icon then select edit and in the new window opened and on the three tabs shown below pls enter

- for essid

cpwbs15431EDE9

- then for wep pls select 128 strength and enter the key that presumably you've got
- then make sure that dhcp is selected

close window and you'll see sa bullet running; let it finish running; hopefully you'll end up with an active conn'n.

sure you can do in a terminal

sudo iwlist wlan0 scan

or

sudo iwconfig

tell us how things go; we'll try to help you.

I would like to try to uninstall wicd & reinstall networkmanager.
(both utils & common (ndiswrapper) show installed)

uninstalling wicd is just uninstall package wicd i guess

but I completely removed the network-manager package so it isn't in my list to reinstall!
The network-manager-gnome is still in the list.

Where to get the network-manager package, or how to get it back in the list?

thanks already!

yes, just remove/uninstall wicd first. - use completely remove option. then in a terminal pls do

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install network-manager network-manager-gnome

keep us posted.