I have an older laptop (P4 Compaq Presario 2110; 512mb RAM) on which I installed Lubuntu 10.10. I am using a Buffalo wireless G PCMCIA card (Broadcom 43xx chip set) on the LXDE side which works perfectly. Out of curiosity I installed 'icewm' and 'openbox.' My wireless card shows when I check lspci as "UP." Using wicd, I can see networks, but my router will not resolve an IP address. NetworkManager does nothing.

I have tried using both ifconfig and iwconfig commands with no love.

Is this something inherent with lighter WMs and desktops? Is there a means to allow my router assign an IP and why would it be different for a different WM? Should the IP address be assigned to the computer?

I dont think you can have wicd and Networkmanager at the same time. Did you install wicd using either apt-get or synaptic? Also, I am not sure how your network is layed out; however, its very easy to set it to the wrong encryption type. You could always try to connect and then watch your logs while the laptop tries to authenticate. It might lead you to what is causing your issue. Also, could you post the output of iwconfig and ifconfig? I have a feeling your problem may be something simple. If you have an older laptop ( maybe your wireless card is older aswell) you might be dealing with a b/g card trying to connect to N. Any way, hope this gets you pointed in the right direction.
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iwconfig:

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID: off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr: off Fragment thr: off
Power Management: off

ifconfig:

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:01:aa:de:d2
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:690 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:857 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:356762 (356.7 KB) TX bytes:169341 (169.3 KB)

Perhaps you misread my post? I am not using wicd and NetworkManager at the same time. I normally use NetworkManager, but since I could not resolve an IP address, tried wicd. The problem is not my configuration, as I am posting this on the laptop in question. When I switch to icewm, everything starts as normal, but I cannot resolve an IP address... I'll ask again; is there something missing from a window manager that is standard in a desktop environment? Are there files or programs that I need to launch manually that I am overlooking?

O, I did misread. I am sorry. However, wicd should work irregardless of the WM your using. I say this because you can run it with out X. I apologize for wasting your time.

Attempting to help is never a waste of time- thank you for trying!! This has me completely at a loss...

Me too. I cant see what a WM would have to do with networking issues. NetworkManager is gtk and wicd has ncurses. I really dont understand why wicd would fail to work for you. Have you tried loading the WM that DOES allow you to connect, then killing it? You could then try stareting up the problem WM and see if it causes the connection to drop. Might help you debug it. Also, your logs will show the authentication process with the router. Perhaps check the log and see if the connection process is even making it that far. Good luck.

Thinking out loud, if I were to manually assign the IP that I am able to get automatically when on LXDE I should be able to connect, right? It is a legitimated IP lease assigned by my router...

No and Yes. The IP is assigned by your router. You need to think of what TCP/IP is. IP is actually like a whole protocol onto itself. So, if you assign a static IP of 192.168.1.1 to the desktop, then try and connect to you router at 192.168.1.2 with out a route your request will fail.

If you are not authenticated with the router you will be unable to do anything. once you authenticate you will be able to get a route to send traffic over. Tht is why I was telling you to watch your logs while trying to log into the router / LAN.