I can't quite understand why this is happening. i have installed ndiswrapper properly and installed drivers for a dwl-g630. after modprobe ndiswrapper i am able to gain a valid ip address after iwconfig wlan0 mode managed and entering a key etc. however, after dhcpcd wlan0 i should have access but i don't. it actually says "dhcpcd.exe wrong interface name wlan0" this is garbage since i know it is the right interface name because that is what iwconfig tells me it is. i am a bit disappointed in mandriva for this but if i am having problems with it i am sure someone else has to. as always, any help would be appreciated.

I'm not sure that Mandriva uses dhcpcd. Try either ifup wlan0 or dhclient wlan0 and see if you get better results.

Um, I'd be much more worried about why you're getting an error about dhcpcd.exe. The .exe bit is a Windows extension and really shouldn't be there.

thank you for the response Hangdog. however, it still didn't work. there is no problem with the hardware because i am able to connect under windows here on this same machine. here is the result:

--- 192.168.0.1 ping statistics ---
0 packets transmitted, 0 received, +3 errors

[root@localhost sinjin]# dhclient wlan0
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.3
Copyright 2004-2005 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/products/DHCP

Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:11:95:69:09:5e
Sending on LPF/wlan0/00:11:95:69:09:5e
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK from 192.168.0.1
bound to 192.168.0.103 -- renewal in 264237 seconds.
[root@localhost sinjin]# ping -c 3 192.168.0.1
PING 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 192.168.0.103 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.168.0.103 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.168.0.103 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable

--- 192.168.0.1 ping statistics ---
0 packets transmitted, 0 received, +3 errors

[root@localhost sinjin]# ifup wlan0

Determining IP information for wlan0... done.
[root@localhost sinjin]# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"cove"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:80:C8:1C:54:83
Bit Rate:11 Mb/s
Encryption key:0123-4567-8901-2345-6789-1234-56 Security modepen
Link Quality:54/100 Signal level:-44 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

[root@localhost sinjin]#

This says that you did get an IP address from the dhclient request and you should see that in the ifconfig output. Do you?

If you do, then also check the output of route -n and make sure that the gateway is pointing to your router's IP address.

One other thing to try would be to set a static IP address and see if that works. You have to do three things to get a static IP address to work:
1) Set the static IP address with ifconfig (ifconfig wlan0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)
2) Set up the gateway with route (route add default gw yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy) And the IP address of this MUST be your router
3) Add your ISP's namserver IP addresses to your /etc/resolv.conf file, one per line:
nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

well. strangely enough i used the gui interface under mandriva control center and configuring the wireless worked. im still a bit disappointed that i couldnt get it to work from the cli. in the end though i am up and running.