[SOLVED] HP 110 WiFi problems

[notme]

Bought HP110 a month or so ago, tested most of it, including wireless and all worked fine. Didn't touch if for a couple of weeks (got distracted by work) turned it on today, installed updates via Ethernet connection (BTW it's running Ubuntu) and couldn't get wireless to work anymore.
When I hover mouse over the status icon it says 'connected 100%'; right click on it and select 'Connection Information' it says
Interface 802.11 WiFi, speed: 54 Mb/s; Driver wl, but IP and everything else is 0. A browser cannot load pages from the net.
DNS is configured fine in network settings (shows ok in /etc/resolv.conf).
In the shell console, using ifconfig, i can see that IP address is not assigned. Doesn't help if I manually assign it either.

Security is (for now) turned off on the router side. Any ideas what else to check? Are there any tools/utilities people use for debugging this kind of thing?

[notme]

just a quick update ... changed the channel ID and got it up and running -- appears i got a few neighbours in the meantime, all using the default channel 1;
also, found that the NetworkManager is very fickle, wouldn't connect when ESSID is not broadcast, when security was turned off and the log file also showed some unhandled signals;
anyway, seems to be working now ...