Wireless requires roaming to be turned off and back on before connecting

[Paul Burne <p burne bigpond com>]

I am fairly new to linux (couple of weeks) and am trying to make the
transition from Windows. I have a problem with my wireless connection
and am trying to work out what the cause is.

When I first boot up, I have no connectivity. At this stage network
manager has wireless set to roaming. The settings for my network are set
in nm-editor (i.e. right clicking the nm-applet icon and selecting 'Edit
Wireless Networks').

I am using Ubuntu Hardy with ndiswrapper.

If I open terminal and type 'iwlist wlan0 scan', I get, 'wlan0 No scan
results'.

However, if I open network admin (i.e. left click the nm-applet icon and
select 'Manual configuration') and setup my network manually, it still
will not connect.

But now when I type 'iwlist wlan0 scan', it now see's my wireless
network.

I then change back to roaming which now connects automatically using the
settings in nm-editor.

Why do I have to disable then re-enable roaming every time before I get
connectivity, and why will it not connect in manual mode?

I have tried with and without an ndiswrapper entry in /etc/modules.

I have checked to make sure there is an ndiswrapper alias
in /etc/modprobe.d

I have removed and reinstalled network-manager and nm-applet

I tried to do a debug by typing 'sudo /etc/init.d/network-manager stop'
but this file does not exist (possible problem here?)

I have been reading through the howto's and wiki's but am not sure what
I should be looking for.

I did a check to see if the ndiswapper module was loaded at startup
using


lsmod

ndiswrapper appears in the list, so I moved the alias
file /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswapper to the /etc/modprobe.d/arch folder to
make sure that the ndiswrapper module was being loaded by nm-applet
using /etc/modules file.

After a reboot 

lsmod

This listed ndiswapper as being loaded.

I went through the process of disabling and re-enabling roaming to get
the network up and running and then checking output of 


tail /var/log/messages

and got the following (I added notes after each process)

Jul 27 00:18:45 paul-laptop kernel: [ 47.550561] [drm] Initialized
radeon 1.28.0 20060524 on minor 0
Jul 27 00:18:46 paul-laptop kernel: [ 48.261188] agpgart: Found an AGP
2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
Jul 27 00:18:46 paul-laptop kernel: [ 48.261217] agpgart: Putting AGP V2
device at 0000:00:00.0 into 4x mode
Jul 27 00:18:46 paul-laptop kernel: [ 48.261257] agpgart: Putting AGP V2
device at 0000:01:05.0 into 4x mode
Jul 27 00:18:47 paul-laptop kernel: [ 181.723641] [drm] Setting GART
location based on new memory map
Jul 27 00:18:47 paul-laptop kernel: [ 181.723720] [drm] writeback test
succeeded in 1 usecs
Jul 27 00:19:09 paul-laptop kernel: [ 212.374552] NET: Registered
protocol family 10
Jul 27 00:19:09 paul-laptop kernel: [ 212.376055] lo: Disabled Privacy
Extensions
Jul 27 00:19:09 paul-laptop kernel: [ 212.378740] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP):
eth0: link is not ready
Jul 27 00:19:09 paul-laptop kernel: [ 212.381322] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP):
wlan0: link is not ready 
-------- After boot (Link LED only is flashing)----------------

Jul 27 00:22:26 paul-laptop kernel: [ 133.105759] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP):
eth0: link is not ready
Jul 27 00:22:26 paul-laptop kernel: [ 133.125585] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP):
wlan0: link is not ready
Jul 27 00:22:26 paul-laptop kernel: [ 133.193865] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP):
eth0: link is not ready
Jul 27 00:22:27 paul-laptop kernel: [ 134.106516] NET: Registered
protocol family 17 
----- After disabling roaming using Network Admin (Both Link and Act
LEDs Flashing) but still no connection ---------

Jul 27 00:23:50 paul-laptop kernel: [ 165.157143] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP):
eth0: link is not ready
Jul 27 00:23:50 paul-laptop kernel: [ 165.189797] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP):
wlan0: link is not ready
Jul 27 00:24:01 paul-laptop dhcdbd: message_handler: message handler not
found under /com/redhat/dhcp/wlan0 for sub-path wlan0.dbus.get.reason
Jul 27 00:24:14 paul-laptop kernel: [ 648.264938] ndiswrapper
(iw_set_freq:334): setting configuration failed (C0010015)
Jul 27 00:24:14 paul-laptop kernel: [ 648.354222]
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlan0: link becomes ready
Jul 27 00:24:18 paul-laptop dhcdbd: message_handler: message handler not
found under /com/redhat/dhcp/wlan0 for sub-path
wlan0.dbus.get.domain_name
Jul 27 00:24:18 paul-laptop dhcdbd: message_handler: message handler not
found under /com/redhat/dhcp/wlan0 for sub-path
wlan0.dbus.get.nis_domain
Jul 27 00:24:18 paul-laptop dhcdbd: message_handler: message handler not
found under /com/redhat/dhcp/wlan0 for sub-path
wlan0.dbus.get.nis_servers
Jul 27 00:24:18 paul-laptop dhcdbd: message_handler: message handler not
found under /com/redhat/dhcp/wlan0 for sub-path
wlan0.dbus.get.interface_mtu
----After re-enabling roaming and falling back to Network manager (Link
LED goes solid, Act LED flashes) connection established---------

For something that is supposed to "Just work" it is frustrating me to no
end.

I am at a loss as to what is going on. It is probably something simple
as a result of the newbie factor.

Could somebody please help me with this problem?

Thanks in advance.