No matter how many times I rmmod bcm43xx it always loaded up on a reboot, network card only seemed to work when I installed a usb adapter and then deleted it. 

I use my works laptop all the time so I installed opensuse 10.2 on an external 160gb hard drive and used the installation dvd to boot the system as I can't alter the mbr on the laptop.  I tried to use grub to set up boot record on the external one but no joy, kept getting errors. 

I felt that the dvd was causing the loading of bcm43xx even though it was blacklisted and the wireless card was configured to use ndiswrapper, the connection information still showed up bcm43xx was being used.

I eventually got lilo installed as boot loader on the external usb and now after booting from the hard drive, the keyring asks for the password, the wireless connection is active immediately using ndiswrapper.

Chuffed to death I am

Cheers,

Andy