Hi Kashif,
Please find below a script that provides a solution from which you can be inspired. I thought I posted it in April 2008, but it seems it went into spam instead!

The solution considers only 64-bit and 128-bit WEP encryption. I had since not been able to look for the solutions for WPA and WPA-PSK.

For that it seems one has to fiddle with the wpa_supplicant services daemon which basically crashes on my laptop (HP Pavilion 5000 running SL50) and the HOWTO documents seem to suggest the appropriate driver for my wireless card is *not* available.

Note that the default gateway may be on the "wrong" ethernet device. Specifically, when running this script from within /etc/rc.local, the default gateway will not be through the wireless card because the wireless card will then be activated at the end of the boot process. Simply deactivate then reactivate the device from system-config-network,  allow all users to reactivate the devices, etc.  Also, you can use, e.g.,

# /sbin/route del default                      ; remove default gateway
# /sbin/route add default gw 192.168.10.1 eth1 ; create new default

to set the default gateway to wireless device (eth1 here) with IP address 192.168.10.1


Hope the above helps.

William.

--------------------[start of script]---------------------------

# This script is just to activate wireless connection for the
# TrendNet TEW-432BRP Wireless Router to the on the
# HP Pavilion 5000 laptop (dv5250ca). The laptop interface is
# the: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection
#
# This script is called from /etc/rc.local at boot time, where the
# filename of the script *manually* inserted.
#
# The wireless router can be used if the laptop is given a fixed
# IP address. For this to happen, the ipw3945d service (driver) has
# to be activated so that the wireless connection is associated with
# the eth1 interface (or whichever).  (From HOWTO documents this is
# done to meet an FCC legal requirement that a user must not be able
# to give unlawful values to certain wireless connectivity parameters.
# The ipw3945d daemon -- issued in binary only -- encapsulates sofware
# that can change certain wireless connectivity parameters into
# unlawful values, had the user had access to the source code.)
# eth0 is associated with the wired network interface.


# 1) activate the ipw3945d daemon
# NOTE: The ipw3945d service must have been activated for eth1 to be seen.
# this need be done only once either from system-config-services graphical
# interface by using chkconfig as following:
# add service for mgt by chkconfig, if not already there
#
# # /sbin/chkconfig --add ipw3945d 
#
# activate service for [at least] runlevels 3 (command line) and 5 (graphics).
#
# /sbin/chkconfig --levels 35 ipw3945d on


# 2) configure the ethernet device. This can be done before step 3 below
# NOTE: It is not yet known how to use an IP from the router's DHCP,
# since eth1 would not be up by then.

/sbin/ifconfig eth1 192.168.1.4 up


# 3) wireless configuration.  This can be done before step 2 above
# give eth1 an SSID ("wlanName"), and automatically adjust bit rate (rate) and
# transmission power (txpower).

/sbin/iwconfig eth1 essid "wlanName" rate auto txpower auto


# give the wireless key in ASCII (s:) and make it shared (restricted)
# NOTE 1: password on command line is insecure as it may appear, say,
#  in ps command.
# NOTE 2: The encryption schem is WEP (Wired Equivalent Protection)
# which is notknown to be secure. For a 128-bit WEP encryption, supply
# a key of 12 ASCII characters (Windows XP may insist on 16 characters).
# Fewer (5 to 8?) may provide a 64-bit WEP encryption.
# NOTE 3: The router also provides WPA and WPA-PSK encryption, but
# iwconfig does not yet handle passphrases, and hence(?) them.

/sbin/iwconfig eth1 key restricted s:xxxxyyyyzzzz

--------------------[end of script]---------------------------

--- On Mon, 7/21/08, [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: wireless card problem
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Monday, July 21, 2008, 11:32 AM
> Hi All
> I have installed SL 5  with dual booting on my  Acer Aspire
> 4710 laptop.
> In Window Vista my wireless network is working fine.It is
> showing Intel(R)
> PRO/Wireless 3945BG wireless card.
> But in linux platform when I try to activate wireless
> network through
> network configuration panel it give this error
> 3c501 device eth1 does not seem to be present, delaying
> initialization.
> please suggest that how to proceed to troubleshoot the
> problem
> Thanks
> Kashif