airmon-ng supports USB WIFI adapter, but WICD doesn't??

[MattRahl]

Hi All,

Host Machine: Windows 7 64x
Virtual Machine (latest edition)
Guest OS (in VM): Backtrack 5 (KDE 64x)

Goal: To use airmon-ng to monitor the wireless interface over my USB WIFI adapter (DOIMAX EW-7318USg) to try and eventually crack my WPA2 encrypted router.

Problem: I've managed to get airmon-ng to monitor the USB wifi adapter, but WICD fails to recognize anything other than my wireless NIC (and sees it as a wired connection). There's no use in monitoring my USB WIFI adapter, if he it can't find any nearby networks.

Steps Taken: I installed a fresh version of Backtrack 5 (KDE 64x) off the website and installed it in my VM Workstation. I learned quickly afterwards that my internal NIC wasn't going to be able to use airmon-ng, so my friend lent me his USB WIFI adapter, which he personally uses for monitoring on backtrack 5 (so, I know this particular device is compatible with BT5 and VM Workstation). I used the USB WIFI adapter on my primary operating system (Windows 7 64x) and it detected plenty of networks, good signal strength, and was able to connect just fine. I then disabled it from my primary OS and enabled the USB WIFI adapter in Backtrack 5 (inside the VM) and ran "airmon-ng start wlan0" and subsequently "airdump-ng mon0". Both commands worked perfectly over the USB WIFI adapter and monitoring was going on. I then look on WICD and discovered that only my internal NIC was being recognized (as a wired network), but that the USB WIFI adapter wasn't able to pick-up any networks...I let airdump-ng run for 35 minutes without it recognizing a single network, when there are plenty.

Thoughts: Perhaps drivers are the issue? That seems odd though, since airmon-ng and airdump-ng function with the current drivers. My other thought is that maybe I need to install VMware tools, but I'm not sure how (and the how-to instructions on the Backtrack main website don't work for BT5).

If anyone could help me out, I'd be greatly indebted. I'm doing this as a self-elected project for a graduate course seminar and this is a frustrating issue that I can't seem to find any resources online to help me with. :|

Thanks in advance,
Matt

[Driedman]

I have had the exact same problem, it lets me connect to my built in wifi on my laptop, but I want it to connect to routers on my USB Belkin G Plus Mimo adapter. But it doesn't seem to work when trying to get it to connect. But it works with the airmon-ng features, if someone could help us it would be much appreciated.