Associating'??

I have two Actiontec USB Wireless cards connecting a WinXP ad hoc network.
To cut a long story short, too much fiddling to try and cure the connections
from keeping dropping left me with a mess so I did a system restore to the
day before I fiddled. So far so good, but the cards now just have a green
blinking light instead of a solid one and the cards just report they are
'Associating' with the channel shifting around all the time.

Any ideas what is going on?

Woody