Laptop wireless problem - further progress

[Lisi Reisz <lisi.reisz@gmail.com>]

The following lines in /e/n/i worked and wireless is now running (I am 
connected over it with ssh), so the hardware is fine - though it is the 
onboard card that is working, and the USB card is still not!!

sarah@debian-wheezy:~$ cat /etc/network/interfaces
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# Bring up wireless
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
        wpa-ssid myssid
        wpa-psk <passphrase>

myssid is verbatim, although it is not, of course, my SSID.  So can I 
make /e/n/i ask for the passphrase at each connection?  And what do I do 
about the possibility that the wired connection might be connected?

Lisi