Netgear wizard or utility

That's an all too common problem with different hardware vendors. The conversion between ASCII and Hex should be a simple, no brainer, easily duplicated, standard. Yet, vendors have often invented different algorithms for doing such a simple thing. The result is incompatibility when using ASCII WEP keys. I run into this so often on mixed systems, that I've gone to using Hex keys exclusively.

Note that you should use a Hex key on both sides of the puzzle (access point and client radios). I had the clever idea of using an ASCII key, and manually converting it to the equivalent Hex key with two of the known algorithms employed by various vendors. Some will even show you the conversion as it generates the keys. Well, it didn't work. For some unknown reason, it failed. So, I'm back to using Hex everywhere and have lived happily ever after.

You may be running into a conflict between the XP auto-config and the Netgear utility. Turn off the Netgear utility and use XP's built in network setting mechanism. It should come up with a "new network found" balloon and give you the opportunity to enter your passphrase. While in there, you probably should change the configuration to only connect to "preferred" networks, as the default is to try to connect to ANY wireless network it finds.

Can't guarantee the accuracy of this, but I've been told in some cases entering the key in decimal fails but entering it in hex works.