wireless card compatibility with network tools

my laptop specs are:
model - HP dv9910us
CPU - AMD TurionX2
Atheros 5007 802.11b/g wireless card
RAM - 3GB
OS - windows vista home premium 32bit sp2

i want to learn more about wireless networking, security and hacking(white hat stuff not malicious ones). i downloaded network tools like wireshark, nmap, netstumbler for the purpose......but i am not being able to use any of them....most of them dont recognise the wi-fi adapter......i have installed the latest winpcap version comptible wid vista!

i searched d net for finding the list of supported wi-fi cards by these softwares but didnt find anything useful!

can someone help me??