Steady red light when laptop goes wi-fi

Hi,
I bought a Belkin F5D7630uk4A wireless router/modem about a year ago
to network a couple of desktop computers and a laptop. It's been very
nice and stable while connected by cables. Months ago, I tried the
wireless PCMCIA card in the laptop and it worked fine. Now when I try
it I get a red light on the card and no functionality.

Windows sometimes claims that the laptop is connected to the available
wireless network and sometimes it claims limited or no connectivity.
Either way no, access to files on other computers.

The only difference I'm aware of between when it worked and now, is
that recently I gave static IP addresses to my laptop and other
computers to allow for port forwarding.
So now in the LAN connection properties a static IP address is shown,
while in the wireless network connection 'Obtain automatically' is
set.
When I try to set up the options to share files on the Advanced tab in
the wireless network connections properties, first I'm told that the
LAN adapter will be given the IP address: 192.168.0.1, which may be OK
but it also says that other computers with static IP addresses should
be set to auto-obtain which is undoing previously required settings.
Can anyone please offer any tips on this?
Another question: Can I keep the laptop connected by cable so I can
read remote files while I'm trying to set it's wireless features up?
TIA
--
Regards,
Mike Halmarack

Drop the EGG to email me.