I was bored and playing around with macchanger to change my Wireless MAC address, and wireless has not worked since, even though I'm using my hardware MAC address again. I'm usually using NetworkManager, but I also installed Wicd to see if I could avoid the problem that way. The problem seems to lie in the WEP password authentication to the local network.
NetworkManager just kept asking for the password over and over again, never connecting. Wicd will claim to connect and issue an IP address, but the wireless does not function. In fact, if I give Wicd a faulty WEP password, it still claims to connect and to issue me an IP address, and it's always the same IP address, even after a reboot. Trying NetworkManager again, now it either fails to connect, just kees trying for a very long time with no results, or nm-applet crashes and I have to restart the NM daemon. I know there are no strange network problems (or blocks on my MAC address, for example) because I can connect with other operating systems just fine, which, incidentally, is not using the same wireless IP address. I'd provide more technical information, but I'm not sure what things are useful. I checked lshal and confirmed my hardware MAC is correct. Any ideas of how to reset the wireless settings or resume the connection would be very helpful. ~daid
