It should be a lot easier than that, although remember that ndiswrapper was kind of flaky until Mandriva 10.1, unless you added it yourself, which I found difficult. Anyway, using text mode, I cd to the directory on my drive where the XP drivers have been exploded (It's a dual-boot setup), then "ndiswrapper -i YourFile.inf" loads the XP drivers (the .inf and the .sys), and then "modprobe ndiswrapper" starts up wlan(0) and you set it with your declarations or using iwconfig. It remembers settings between boots, and the OS will even pick up a different card if you swap them between boots, and set it all up for you.
Britt Dickson
Member 3.14159