OK, I did skip a thing or two. On your Linksys wireless card, you sisn't post the exact model, so we can't tell you if that card works or not. Wireless cards have been a very weak point in Knoppix. Many wireless makers will not release hardware programming information and either release no drivers for Linux or drivers that are so bad and bloated that they can't reasonably be included with Knoppix. Support is improving slowly, but the key word here is slowly. Version 3.8 was finally able to recognize one of my wireless cards (a Belkin 802.11b), will still not work with the others (Dlink).

That you mention having wireless makes me think that you do have a router (else what could you be trying to connect to). This makes your virus problem very hard to understand, even with Zone Alarm. A software firewall may help some and is very important to let you monitor and control outbound traffic, but the viruses should never get in unless you do unsafe things. Make sure you keep the DMZ feature of your router disabled.