Mistakenly posted this down in the regular networking forum yesterday. Hoping to have some response by cutting and pasting here.

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Not having much luck in searching for a resolution for this one.

I just set up two boxes side-by-side with Mandrake 10.1. They have identical wireless NICs and I used the same Windows driver and Ndiswrapper version. One works fine and one doesn't. The driver works fine on my personal machine, so that's not the problem. And the installation procedure is the one on sourceforge.

Apparently, I hit a key incorrectly when rolling through the ndiswrapper installation on the problem unit because on issuing 'ifconfig', I get not only wlan0 but also wlan0:9. I'm assuming this is what's causing my connection problem (there is no connection).

I've been looking for a way to remove the "device" wlan0:9 with no luck. I have removed it from /etc/modprobe.conf (the alias ndiswrapper line), but it's still hanging around. Similarly, 'ifconfig wlan0:9 down' will remove it until I log out and back in. If you could point me to its other potential hiding spots, I'd really appreciate it.

Google is your friend. *ahem*

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...04/03/4/160325

Ha! Actually, I did find that one yesterday. And the only thing I could understand from it then (and now) is that I should check /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0 for proper configuration. That file is the same as on the sister machine right next to it. There are also no other ifcfg-* files in that directory (besides lo). Am I missing something in that link?

Okay, got it working (for now) purely by accident, I'm sure. But I'll post the last steps I did in case anyone else ever has such an odd problem.

Removed 'alias wlan0:9 ndiswrapper' line from /etc/modprobe.conf (again!)
Rebooted and confirmed that the line hadn't re-infested modprobe.conf
Issue 'ifconfig' to confirm that both real and fake devices show up
Unload fake device with 'ifconfig wlan0:9 down'
Unload wlan driver with 'ndiswrapper -e <drivername>'
Rebooted and confirmed that any wlan cannot load at startup (missing driver error)
Followed ndiswrapper installation procedure from step 2 (install Windows driver) to end
Forced ndiswrapper to load on next boot (add line to /etc/modprobe.preload for my mdk)
Rebooted and saw zero wlan errors during startup.
Logged in and had a working conn

I'm not sure why my several previous attempts at reinstallation didn't work, excpet maybe I followed a slightly different procedure, such as not unloading or loading at a certain step. Note that above I actually forgot to unload the proper wlan0 before running through the ndiswrapper procedure. That may have been what made it work this time, but I'm not experienced enough to know if that matters. I can't guarantee that the above procedure is exact, but if it's not, it should be close enough to give someone an idea of how to approach the problem.