Hey there everyone, I'm new to this so please bear with me.

I'm a linux newbie and I'm starting off with the new Mandrake 10
distribution, kernel 2.6.3.

I have a Dell Inspiron 8600 with the (oh so problematic it seems)
Intel Centrino Mobile Internal Wireless Device for 802.11b.
I have everything up and running except for the horror that is
Intel Wireless. I used the forums as well as some third party help
to get ndiswrapper-0.6 setup and loaded the default driver.
Everything seems to work ok, mode, essid, and the device is
recognized, but I cannot connect to any access points.

The adapter address always appears as the default FF:FF:FF...
you get the idea. I tried to manually enter the access point just
to see if it would connect that way, but unfortunately no it hasn't.
I'm just curious if anyone else ran into this problem with Centrino
and the ndiswrapper or if I'm just not doing something right.

Any help would be appreciated, or suggestions. If you need any
other information I can do my best to give it to you. Thanks to
anyone who reads this and/or gives me some help. It's appreciated.

post your output of
ifconfig
iwconfig
netstat -rn

ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr [edited]
inet addr:192.168.1.104 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20d:56ff:feae:fef9/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:349 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:544 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:7
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:159242 (155.5 Kb) TX bytes:65595 (64.0 Kb)
Interrupt:11

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:224 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:224 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:16636 (16.2 Kb) TX bytes:16636 (16.2 Kb)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr [edit]
inet6 addr: fe80::204:23ff:fea1:26ef/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:992 (992.0 b)
Interrupt:11 Memory:faffc000-faffcfff

iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
sit0 no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412GHz Access Point: FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
Bit Rate:11Mb/s
RTS thr:1600 B Fragment thr:2344 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0/100 Signal level:-98 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

when I run "ifconfig wlan0 up" this also appears below my wlan0
wlan0:9
Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:04:23:A1:26:EF
inet addr:127.255.255.255 Bcast:127.255.255.255 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
Interrupt:11 Memory:faffc000-faffcfff

There is the output... with just a small edit. But anyway, my ESSID isn't showing
up now either, even after I use:
iwconfig wlan0 key ########
iwconfig wlan0 essid ESSID
although previously it appeared in the config

Hope this helps you out then... and thanks for taking a look at my post.

Make sure that you do not have more than one interface on the same network. eth0 and wlan0 can not be both on 192.168.1 network. Routing will be confused and you will not be able to send/receive packets.

use /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0
to set your networking and wireless options for wlan0.

Make sure to set your GATEWAY (IP address of machine that is your gateway/router machine on the same network). You will just set your gateway for your default interface whether it be eth0 or wlan0.

You also need to make sure that that for both interfaces the NETMASK is set to 255.255.255.0
and BROADCAST is set to the first 3 digits of the network address with the 4th digit being 255.

iwconfig syntax for setting the KEY is funky, what usually works for me is
"restricted [1] XXXXXXXXXX" where XXXXXXXXXX is the hex value of the the key.

Hey thanks!

I just got it all working today... not having any problems now.
I appreciate the help.