HI I actually had my wireless working on here before, but managed to mess it up after trying to set up a webserver on here. I am running Hardy Heron Server edition (Ubuntu). This is my network adapter- a USB type:
Bus 005 Device 003: ID 07d1:3c03 D-Link System DWL-G122 802.11g Adapter [ralink rt73]. And the rt73 driver is enabled, or at least I think it is, I see rt73 common listed in my Synaptics Package with the green box checked, I enabled it. My wireless router is Linksys160 N, and the two were working together ok, without all the hassle of using 'ndswrapper' etc. But now they don't, and I currently am online by having the wireless router physically connected to computer with a cable. I powered down the modem/router/computer, rebooted etc. etc. many times. I reset the router to factory setting and reset it with the help of Linsys phone help. So there must be some step I need to do to configure things again in the terminal. Can someone please help, I have read a lot of guides about this, but not sure what to do, I don't want to to more than I have to, or enter something in the terminal I shouldn't. thanks very much.

Welcome to LQ! Please post the output of ifconfig and iwconfig, (run as root).

Thanks for the quick reply pentode, I was out shovelling my driveway when u answered (about 3 feet of snow came, and is still falling- April Fool's joke for us for sure!) Here are the results, form iwconfig and ifconfig: ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:13:8f:8a:00:30
inet addr:192.168.1.101 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::213:8fff:fe8a:30/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:2027175 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2397440 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:981165111 (981.1 MB) TX bytes:2120861950 (2.1 GB)
Interrupt:23 Base address:0xc00

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:6633 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:6633 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:2650509 (2.6 MB) TX bytes:2650509 (2.6 MB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:15:e9:ad:dc:df
inet6 addr: fe80::215:e9ff:fead:dcdf/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1215831 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1176554 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:884682499 (884.6 MB) TX bytes:497412137 (497.4 MB)

wmaster0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-15-E9-AD-DC-DF-63-64-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wmaster0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:18 Mb/s Tx-Power=7 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thr=2352 B
Power Managementff
Link Quality=49/100 Signal level:-30 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

pan0 no wireless extensions.

Well, what does anyone make of that?