wifi is not working since upgrade to ubuntu 9.10

[Alan White <awhite0006 gmail com>]

The HP laptop has had trouble with wireless since an upgrade some time 
ago, via Ubuntu Upgrade: NetworkManager stopped working and in fact the 
applet disappeared from the upper panel.

Wired networking is usually used at home, but I am leaving soon for a 
trip, and would REALLY like to have WiFi working!

I do not know much about setting up or fixing networking issues, and 
would appreciate any help figuring out what to do.

I just got to the point where a message comes up at login, "Password or 
authentication keys are required to access the wireless network 'foo'" 
-- but the dropdown window will not open. This occurs even though eth0 
is plugged in ...

--------------------
Also, the nm-applet disappeared and when I try to run it in a terminal, 
this shows:

awhite awhite:~$ nm-applet&
[1] 4193
awhite awhite:~$ libnotify-Message: GetServerInformation call failed: 
Too few arguments in reply
libnotify-Message: Error getting spec version

** (nm-applet:4193): WARNING **: <WARN>  request_name(): Could not 
acquire the session service as it is already taken.  Return: 3


** (nm-applet:4193): WARNING **: <WARN>  constructor(): Couldn't 
initialize the D-Bus manager.


[1]+  Exit 1                  nm-applet
awhite awhite:~$
------------------

Also, when the applet was in the panel, clicking on the "click here to 
make changes" did not allow changes to be made.

------------------
System:

HP G60, Ubuntu 9.10, Atheros 5K ; athlon X2 64 but 32 bit Linux:

Linux awhite 2.6.31-22-generic-pae #68-Ubuntu SMP Tue Oct 26 16:52:34 
UTC 2010 i686 GNU/Linux

Thanks for assistance.