HP nx9600 wireless trouble

[spanky86]

I'm pretty new to linux and I just installed slackware 11.0 to my HP nx9600 laptop.

I've used ndiswrapper to use the windows driver. Here's the output of iwconfig:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:off/any  Nickname:"Home"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:25 dBm   
          RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr=2346 B   
          Encryption key:***   Security mode:restricted
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

I'm unable to set the essid with iwconfig; and iwlist wlan0 scan returns no results. I know there are several wireless networks around here that it should be seeing. The only thing I can think of is that my laptop has a wireless button to turn on/off the wireless but it's not usable in slackware, I don't see a light from it. Not sure if this has anything to do with it but I can't find any other help on the issue.

[spanky86]

Hmm, not really sure why but after a restart (which hadn't worked before) the wireless card is working and the blue light on the on/off button is on.

[kern]

have you installed the free intel firmware ? I use an nc6000 and had to do this, its an intel based minipci card so I didnt have to use ndiswrapper thankfully.