Earlier today I fired up the dinosaur that has XP on it and tried to enable internet connection sharing.  However I kept getting error messages and wasted too much time on it.  After wasting a couple of hours researching and trying solutions that didn't work.  So I decided to reinstall xp on the dinosaur.  That fixed the problem.  Then I installed kubuntu 12.04 on this machine then installed ndiswrapper.  Next I installed the xp driver for the usb adapter.  Then I plugged in the usb adapter.  Then the system displayed all the wireless networks it found.  I selected the correct one  and it works.  I'm using the kubuntu installation to write this.  In fact, everything worked without a hitch once I got windows out of the way.

Thanks to those of you who pointed me in the right direction.