Thanks Scott, thanks Hoba
My WIFI PCI Card: Netgear WG311T (Atheros)
What i did the last hour: first i upgraded from BETA4 again to RC2 by executing 'cvs_sync.sh releng_1 && shutdown -r now' via Putty…
Then i followed the advise of Hoba to set the WEP Key to 'open' from shared - that did the trick! WIFI worked on the RC2! But much more Headache i earned as the internet was not accessible at all anymore - reloaded the pfsense, reloaded the Laptop - no chance, even via Ethernet i did not succeed anymore to access the www!
Made a trace, stuck on the pfsense... strange that DNS resolving worked (checked interface status of WAN - released and renewed the IP of my Provider - no effect - no access; however... got rid again of the RC2 and changed to the 'RELENG_1_SNAPSHOT-07-23-2006' - the Trick with the 'open' WEP Key still worked and now the www was accessible again (settings never changed, they were always inherited obviously as i did firmware upgrades via GUI)
So finally i'm glad that everything runs now, am wondering if the GUI shows me the next days again the CPU Load Bar fully up at 100% - even as 'top' says 5% ;-) - if so, i could live with that!
Thanks Guys, i'm going now around to change the hosts config from 'shared' to 'open' ;D