LinuxQuestions.org - WMP11-B v2.7 Configuration

I am using mandrake 9.2
(before you say to use the control center, letme state that it will not work because i have to use ndiswrapper to load the windows drivers, basically the same as driverloader and the control center wants me to choose a driver to use.)

i have a Linksys WMP11-B v2.7 wireless network card, i have read that people have been able to get it to work using ndiswrapper. I installed ndiswrapper and have everything setup, ifconfig see's the network card as eth0

i have been fighting with iwconfig and ifconfig for days trying to get this to work. Here is what i do and the order in which i do it in.

iwconfig eth0 mode Managed
iwconfig eth0 essid wireless
iwconfig eth0 key restricted KEY-HERE

(sometimes i have to reverse the essid and key to get it to retrieve the mac address for the router)
up until this point everything looks good iwconfig eth0 returns the results i wanted to see, so i then do

ifconfig et0 192.168.1.4
ifconfig eth0

everything seems ok until i do iwconfig eth0 again, it loses the mac address for the router and sometimes the key is set to off as well.

also sometimes when i try to start the card with ifup eth0 i get this error

[root@localhost idle0ne] ifup eth0
grep: /etc/sysconfig/networking/default/ifcfg-*: No such file or directory
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
SET failed on device eth0 : Invalid argument

if anyone can help me i would really appreciate it i have been fighting with this for about 3-4 days now and i am about to say the hell with linux, i have been unable to get more than one or two people with any knowledge to help on IRC which is where i usually go for help, even then they couldnt help me get it to associate with the router.

oh one more thing, after doing ifconfig eth0 IP i can ping the local ip so that works, but when i try to ping the router it is an unknown host.