PCI wireless problem

[Natorgator]

I have a weird issue with my motherboard, I think.

So about a year ago, I bought a D-link wireless pci card for my desktop, since my apartment has a "roommate plan" that doesn't make running wires across very easy. I never could get it to work. it would see networks and send packets, but wouldn't pull an IP address. I finally gave up, got a USB internet adapter and forgot about and left the card in.

That was with Windows, and now I've just installed Ubuntu a few days ago. The USB adapter doesn't seem to work with it (slows the system to a crawl) so I ditched it. D-link card still doesn't work: it does the same thing as it did with windows a year ago. So naturally, I went and bought a new wireless card.

Trouble is, it does the same thing. After I got around the driver issue, it just wouldn't connect to my network for no real reason. The syslog shows the router and card are talking, but then it errors out. That was last night, so I tried it this morning, and lo and behold it worked (and I'm typing this post on it.) I have my doubts that it will continue to work like this though, as the previous card once worked right for about four hours and then never worked again.

So, any thoughts? What are the odds that I'd get two defective wireless cards that had the exact same symptoms? My roommate's PCI wireless nic works fine, btw.