Problems with wireless card AirLink101-AWLC3026 on Linux (it shutsdown sporadically and can't connect to protected networks)

I switched my friend's laptop from Windows into Linux (Gentoo). Kernel
is 2.6.19-gentoo-rc5.
Wireless card worked on Windows with no problems.

But on Linux there are two problems:
1. Card connects ok to unprotected network (no password) but shuts
down periodically (after ~15 mins) for no apparent reason. Power light
stays up but signal light doesn't flash at all. Once it is shut down
'ifconfig' still shows it as 'UP' but no packets go through.

2. It somehow doesn't connect to encrypted wireless network.
Key on Windows was 10 zeros (0000000000). But when I set this through
iwconfig:
iwconfig wlan0 essid <myessid>
iwconfig wlan0 key s:0000000000
ifconfig wlan0 up
dhcpcd wlan0

I tried to drop "s:' but still the same problem.
Power light on the card begins flashing which means that it can't
connect. My card is AirLink101 and I use binary blob driver with
NDISwrapper.

I solved the problem myself.
When the problem was happening I used 2.6.19 kernel with
ndiswrapper-1.51.
2.6.19 was released in the early 2007. And ndiswrapper-1.51 -- just
recently in December 2007.

Problem is gone once I upgraded the kernel to 2.6.23.