MA101 Somtimes Sees Wrong Channel ??

I am totally new to wireless networking, I just got my first one this
week, Netgear MR814v2 802.11b router (WinXP) and Netgear MA101 USB
adapter (Win98SE). Still on my initial setup with all the default
settings, ie channel 11, SSID is 'NETGEAR', not using WEP. My question
is, why is it that after a coldboot, my adapter cannot connect because
it is looking at channel 6 instead of channel 11? It will not let me
change it, the ONLY way to fix it is to reboot, which usually works.
Would this be from a neighbors network, or am I way off? Would
changing the SSID help this?

Thanks, Dave