wicd went south?
 

This is a fairly new install of 13.37 32 bit on a Dell n5010 laptop. Up till a few days ago wireless was fine. Nothing new installed but now it will not connect to my home network. The wicd log says possible wpa_supplicant authentication error. My other system connects fine. Password has not changed. The wireless is up on the Dell. Wicd finds all available networks but when connecting first says "none:authenticating" then goes to the network name. It fails with a bad password message.
Have removed both wicd and wpa_supplicant and re-installed with no change. The only unusual thing I can really see is the signal strength shown is in negative numbers while on the the other system (working properly) signal strength shows in positive numbers.

I've looked all the logs I can find and am seeing nothing strange.
So once again I'm lost in the frozen wastelands seeking enlightenment from the gurus.

Even if you saw nothing strange in the logs, we might find something. Also, have you tried changing the drivers in wicd? There's an "Advanced" section that lets you pick a different driver. Try them out and see if that helps (it's usually the cause of bad password).

I'm using the wext driver. What would you suggest changing to? Also what logs should I post?

A shot in the dark:

Something I ran across awhile back when I went from a dlink card to a trendnet was that I could never get wicd to work. Tried remove and reinstall wicd to no avail. After some screwing around I found that when you remove wicd the file in /etc stays there. When I removed wicd and trashed the file in /etc and then reinstalled wicd then I was able to get wicd working.

This may or may not be reinvent to your problem tho...

Sorry, some how this double posted..

Tried it but no luck. Removed everything related to wicd then re-installed and got nowhere.

Two things to consider:

1. Regarding the signal being positive numbers on one machine and negative numbers on the other: if you set it to display (in wicd settings) the signal in percentage, it will show positive numbers, if it is in dbm, it will be negative numbers. This might answer the question about positive and negative signal strength.

2. My wicd does the same thing as yours from time to time - when connecting to various routers. I find that either restarting the computer OR the router normally solves the problem. Nothing else seems to fix it otherwise. However, you might have already tried both - so not sure if it helps.