I bought a Linksys WMP54G wireless PCI card and installed it last
night using ndiswrapper. By all accounts it should be working, but
I can't get it to work on a -B network. It sees the packets, but isn't
switching, and iwconfig doesn't have any effect on the bit rate or
essid. It only changes the mode and channel as far as I can tell.
Here's dmesg after I modprobe ndiswrapper:

ndiswrapper version 0.9-pre2 loaded
ndiswrapper: driver bcmwl5.sys added
ndiswrapper: using irq 12
divert: allocating divert_blk for wlan0
wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:0f:66:6e:4d:97 using driver bcmwl5.sys
ndiswrapper device wlan0 supports WPA with AES/CCMP and TKIP ciphers

Which is correct according to ndiswrapper INSTALL. Iwconfig wlan0 gives:

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00
Bit Rate:54Mb/s Tx-Power:16 dBm
RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-10 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:27497 Missed beacon:0

Notice "Invalid misc" is incrementing every few seconds, so I think it is
seeing the access point on some level. Iwlist scan returns nothing.

Any ideas?

passthetwitch; sorry have not done that but take look at last (2)two lines
bottom of post. rx invalid nwid:0, rx invalid crypt:0 etc. believe those are redflags of where problem is. check them out.

Have you got RTS and fragment set on your Access Point?

Maybe try turning off RTS and fragment, with something like

also, shouldnt you set your essid to your access point essid like 'netgear' for example

Lastly double check you Access Point settings, against you iwconfig output.

I use the same wifi card and i meet the same problem.
After some tries, I find i can set up the essid if i change the mode to ad-hoc. But, if i change the mode again to managed, the essid is lost.
I am still looking for a solution...