Cannot Change essid using iwconfig

[Rick Bilonick]

I know the bcm4318 mini pci wifi card works in my Dell Inspiron 2200
laptop - I had installed a hard drive with Fedora 8 (installed on a
different laptop) and I had no trouble using ndiswrapper and getting the
wireless nic to work perfectly. Now I've put the original hard drive
(that had Fedora 6 working with the same wireless nic) back in,
installed Fedora 8 (destroying all of the original data on the disk).
I've installed the same kernel, ndiswrapper, kernel modules, etc. that
is on the other hard drive with Fedora 8, went through the same process
but cannot get the wireless nic with the new Fedora 8 to work. Surely,
it can't be the hard drive (the laptop connects to the wired eth0
connection). If I put the other hard drive in with Fedora 8, the bcm4318
connects to the wireless network.

I've blacklisted bcm43xx, b43, and ssb (not sure ssb needs to be
blacklisted or even can be blacklisted).

I can get the nic to scan:

[root@localhost ~]# iwlist wlan0 scan 
wlan0     Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:18:E7:0B:50:B0
                    ESSID:"default"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11g
                    Mode:Managed
                    Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
                    Quality:50/100  Signal level:-64 dBm  Noise
level:-96 dBm
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s
                              9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
                              48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Extra:bcn_int=100
                    Extra:atim=0

[root@localhost ~]# 

ndiswrapper reports:

[root@localhost ~]# ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl5 : driver installed
        device (14E4:4318) present (alternate driver: ssb)

I'm not sure what ssb is but when the other drive was it, I received the
same message and the nic connected to the wireless network.

dmesg reports:

ndiswrapper version 1.48 loaded (smp=yes, preempt=no)
ndiswrapper: driver bcmwl5 (Broadcom,12/22/2004, 3.100.46.0) loaded
ndiswrapper: using IRQ 1

(see below)

wlan0: ethernet device 00:14:a5:09:f5:28 using NDIS driver: bcmwl5,
version: 0x3642e00, NDIS version: 0x501, vendor: 'NDIS Network Adapter',
14E4:4318.5.conf
wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP; TKIP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2PSK;
AES/CCMP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2PSK
usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper

modprobe reports:

[root@localhost ~]# modprobe -l | grep ndiswrapper
/lib/modules/2.6.23.9-85.fc8/extra/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper.ko

lspci reports:

[root@localhost ~]# lspci | grep BCM
02:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One
54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

If I try to manually configure the nic using iwconfig, I can set the key
but I CANNOT get it to set the essid:

[root@localhost ~]# iwconfig wlan0 essid default
[root@localhost ~]# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point:
Not-Associated   
          Bit Rate:54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:25 dBm   
          RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B   
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

(iwconfig will set the key, but I'm not showing the key info.)

When I use dhclient to obtain a lease, it tells me no leases were
offered (even though the other laptop is connected to the wireless
network and I've had them both wirelessly connected at the same time
when using Fedora 6 on the Dell).

I cannot figure out why iwconfig cannot set the essid.

What else can I check? Any ideas on what is wrong or how to fix this?

(I've tried the "native" driver for the bcm4318 but it just will not
work.)

Rick B.

P.S. I do get this message from dmesg but I don't think it has anything
to do with ndiswrapper:

irq 5: nobody cared (try booting with the "irqpoll" option)
 [<c045b16a>] __report_bad_irq+0x36/0x75
 [<c045b380>] note_interrupt+0x1d7/0x213
 [<c057ae99>] usb_hcd_irq+0x21/0x4e
 [<c045a807>] handle_IRQ_event+0x23/0x51
 [<c045bcaf>] handle_level_irq+0x88/0xb9
 [<c045bc27>] handle_level_irq+0x0/0xb9
 [<c04074c3>] do_IRQ+0x8c/0xb9
 [<c0405b6f>] common_interrupt+0x23/0x28
 [<c0431dec>] __do_softirq+0x50/0xd3
 [<c04073d5>] do_softirq+0x6c/0xce
 [<c0444685>] tick_do_update_jiffies64+0x15/0xa8
 [<c04401a1>] ktime_get+0xf/0x2b
 [<c045bc27>] handle_level_irq+0x0/0xb9
 [<c0431cc5>] irq_exit+0x38/0x6b
 [<c04074d6>] do_IRQ+0x9f/0xb9
 [<c043ff74>] hrtimer_start+0xfe/0x10a
 [<c0403ddf>] default_idle+0x0/0x55
 [<c0405b6f>] common_interrupt+0x23/0x28
 [<c0403ddf>] default_idle+0x0/0x55
 [<c042007b>] save_v86_state+0x19/0x12b
 [<c0421f78>] native_safe_halt+0x2/0x3
 [<c0403e18>] default_idle+0x39/0x55
 [<c040340b>] cpu_idle+0xab/0xcc
 [<c073fa6c>] start_kernel+0x32c/0x334
 [<c073f177>] unknown_bootoption+0x0/0x195
 =======================
handlers:
[<c057ae78>] (usb_hcd_irq+0x0/0x4e)
Disabling IRQ #5