Connectivity Issues with Atheros Wireless Card

Hello Everyone!

I am sorta using this site as a last resort. I know that people have many questions on here and I feel greedy asking for help. I am pretty decent with wireless networking and I guess this is why I am so frustrated right now. I am the administrator of a school network that has just recently implemented some Cisco 1130AG access points. Everything was set up by the person that was running the network before me. He set 128-bit WEP on the network. Everything was working very smoothly until I tried getting a bundle of Toshiba Tecra A2's (specs here: http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/...BV_EngineID=ccccaddljfdijemcgfkceghdgngdgmm.0) to connect to the network. Usually, the Tecras will boot up with the wireless saying "Not Connected" even though I can get internet. Eventually (after about 5 minutes) the internet will disconnect and it still says "Not Connected." When I try to repair the connection, I get Limited to No Connectivity. I get absolutely NO packets back from the access point. I tried upgrading the drivers, uninstalling the software, reinstalling the software, uninstalling the drivers, reinstalling the drivers, and absolutely nothing works. Anybody who can throw out any help whatsoever would be my favorite person in the entire world. lol. Thanks!

P.S. As mentioned in the title, the card is an Atheros card. The documentation in the link above says that the card is an Intel card. I have installed and upgraded drivers for both Atheros and Intel wireless cards. They both seem to work... well.... somewhat anyways. The stickers on the laptops say that the card is an Atheros. Were Atheros cards made by Intel?

 

would it be wrong to use static IP, default gateway, and/or manually configured DNS servers?