3Com wireless lan pc card connection problems

[RacybabeUK]

I installed a completely wireless network at home using a

3Com office connect adsl wireless 11g firewall router with
D Link Wireless network card running XP Pro

3Com wireless lan pc card to laptop running XP Home

D Link wireless network card to pc running XP Pro

The network runs fine apart from when i shut down the laptop and then i have to go into the card settings in 3Com Wireless Card Manager and double click the profile or open up network connections and click on connect in there - then finally get the connection back up again!

I have downloaded the firmware update for the 3Com pc card but the firmware update for the router is not playing ball. When i go into the router management console via the http:192.168.1.1. and upgrade in the settings i get a message invalid user interface I have emailed 3com but keep getting messages saying they will get back to me but they dont! Or direct me to their knowledge base which i can't find the answer to this problem.

When i installed the NIC to the laptop I associated the network profile to the laptop instead of manually entering in the ip address of the router.

I have set SSID broadcast off, MAC filters are in use for all 3 computers, SSID name has been changed from the default but no encryption has been set as I kept losing the wireless connection when i tried to enable it and I don't want to install a wired network card. I don't store any bank or credit details and am happy with my level of security as it is.

What i would like to do is to get an instant connection to my network when starting up my laptop instead of having to mess around with connection settings each time.

Any ideas how i can achieve this please?