Getting Laptop Wifi Adaptor to see Access Points
 

I have recently installed the latest stable version of Debain (Lenny) to my Acer Aspire One Notebook computer with an ath5k chipset. It's my first time putting Linux on a device, and i am having trouble with the wireless connections. i followed some adivice i read in forums using :
ifconfig wlan0 up
iwfonfig wlan0
iwlist wlan0 scan

with iwconfig it says in the response:

Access Point: Not-Associated

and with iwlist, the scan of wlan0 says - No scan results.

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianAcerOne...mac80211driver
I read something in this site about the wireless card needing extra attention cuz the AR5007 chipset wont work with the drivers in the kernel packages earlier than 2.6.28, and mine is 2.6.26.

So it says I can back-port the latest mac80211 drivers, which I don't know what back-port means yet but I can google that to figure out. But my question is this:

When I use the lsmod command, I see that the drivers ath5k and cfg80211 work with mac80211, so I was wondering if they needed to be "back-ported" as well? And if that is likely what is going to solve problem of my wlan0 supposedly being configured and turned on, but not seeing any APs in the scan?

Plus - my wireless LED does not come on at any point.

Any insight, or pointing me in the right direction would be great.

Thanks!!

Wow this is really upsetting - cant get my wifi to work. Tried a few things,
changed to a new version of the kernel by backporting - was supposed to have
the drivers that worked for this chipset, but i got the same result.
then read somewhere that someone removed network manager and then it worked so I
tried that with no luck, then tried installing wicd but that didnt work.
now im trying to install mad wifi, but im kinda lost -think i need a break for tonight.

im worried how much damage ive done and how hard it will be to repair and then finally get it
working - considering rebooting from the unetbootin USB stick and basically doing a
system re-install