Strange errors with wpa_supplicant with Knoppix

[stonee at Safe-mail.net]

I am having a strange problem using the version of wpa_supplicant supplied with Knoppix. This is the version I am using:

knoppix at 0[knoppix]$ wpa_supplicant -v
wpa_supplicant v0.4.0
Copyright (c) 2003-2005, Jouni Malinen <jkmaline at cc.hut.fi> and contributors

Here is a description of the issue I am having:

If I start up my computer, then issue the wpa_supplicant command to authenticate to my wireless network (after a few seconds) Knoppix will freeze and I will need to restart my laptop. This will continue to happen every time I restart my computer.

However if I restart the wireless router and immediately issue the wpa_supplicant command, I do no have any problems. On the network there is also another computer that runs Windows XP. This laptop never has any issues getting onto the network.

The wireless router that I have is the Netgear WGR614. I am using WPA-PSK on this network. The timeout period for the key is 60 minutes.

Has anyone ever run into this issue before with other hardware devices? Or is this perhaps some kind of hardware issue?