nm-applet suddenly offers no options

["Peter Flynn" <peter silmaril ie>]

[Edgy, Dell Inspiron 4150; NEC PCMCIA ATERM WL54SC wifi card]

I had NM working nicely for all my wireless networks. I then installed
Enlightenment (e16) to see what it offered (very nice) and found that I had
lost all connections except my default home wifi (which may well be being
detected and connected by some other daemon -- I don't know and can't tell).

The Network Manager (and Dispatcher) daemons were running, but nm-applet
couldn't run because there is no systray in e16.

I logged out and logged back into Gnome, and nm-applet is now dead: it shows
in the tray, but says:

[hover] No network connection
[left-click] No network devices have been found
[right-click] Enable networking (checked); Connection information (greyed
out); About

I went back into e16 and installed Trayer in an attempt to allow nm-applet to
execute, which it did, but it gave the same result. I have now uninstalled all
the Enlightenment packages and returned to Gnome. Still no spark from nm-applet.

I managed to get a wired connection in the office by manually rewriting
/etc/network/interfaces, and I've uninstalled NM and NM-gnome and reinstalled
them, but how do I get things back to the state where nm-applet sees my
network devices (eth0, ath0, wlan0...) and their associated configs and
keyring data. Right now there seems to be no way to force it to see that they
are there.

[And if nm-applet is dead in the water, *what* is seeing my home wifi and
connecting to it?]

Both wifi-radar and wireless assistant agree that the wireless networks I want
are there, in range, and active, and that they are the relevant office
networks, but as they are all using WPA/PEAP/Dynamic WEP, and my
username/password is in my keyring (presumably---still) I can't connect to
them without nm-applet.

Does anyone know why nm-applet is refusing to see them?

///Peter