I'm running Ubuntu Dapper Drake and as the subject says I was able to connect to my wireless network when it was open, but now that my house mate has put a WEP key on it I cannot. I can still see the network and can access the router settings, but when I try to connect using Network Settings (having put the correct key in) it says something like 'enabling connection' indefinitely. It also seems when I close it, I'm no longer able to open programs or even restart the computer! Any help with this problem would be very much appreciated!

This is the output from #iwconfig wlan0:

wlan0 802.11b/g NIC ESSID:"linksys"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:14:BF:26:46B
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s
Retryff RTS thr=2432 B Fragment thrff
Encryption key:****-****-** Security modepen
Power Managementff
Link Quality=88/100 Signal level=64/100 Noise level=0/100
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:50
Tx excessive retries:6274 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

and #ifconfig wlan0:

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:03:6D:F4:E8:1D
inet6 addr: fe80::203:6dff:fef4:e81d/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:297 errors:50 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:50
TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:94531 (92.3 KiB) TX bytes:148 (148.0 b)

I am a newbie with linex, I get this problem as well everytime i boot try to log on. The way I get around it is going into administration, then network settings, and clicking disable, and one it has confirmed that it is disabled, then clicking enable.
I hope that helps.

Also, try a Network manager program such as KInternet, or NetworkManager. I use KInternet on my laptop and can now easily move from one Wireless hotspot to another - some of which are WEP enabled