Access Problems

having gotten my PC wireless network working I am now attempting to get my Laptop working as well .. It is aN HP ze2300 series with a Broadcom chip, running windows XP Pro and SP2, with 1 gb of ram .. the router is a Dlink DI 524

the Laptop wireless card is 'basically' working in that all drivers loaded fine and after config the Kwifi goes green ! BUT [it seems there is always a 'but'] the laptop flatly refuses to see the router or any other pc in the net ..

I Did an iwconfig and the main things that I see are different from the pc that is working is as follows ..

There is no idication of Access Point .. ie it shows 00:00:00:00... [it does not see the router Mac I guess]
RTS thru : 2347B fragment thru 2346B [My PC shows these as being 'off']
Essid : off/any ....[note: I have tried to set this but even though wcardconfig accepts the name I give it, it does not seem to stick .. i have even tried to do it thru a cmd line in root ...]

My Knoppix PC shows what I assume is the Mac address for the router and it also shows RTS & Fragment as 'off' ..
I have tried pump -i wlan0 with no success, the laptop card configurations all seem ok ..

The laptop wireless works perfectly fine under windows xp pro

What do you think ??

TIA
Wolf