wireless adapter default IP

I've jsut installed one care, my wireless adapter on my network is physically
turned off, but this doesnt' disable the card from the OS perspective as a
result vista allocates the default non-routable private address to the
adapter.

One care sees the non-routable address as a public network so slams up my
firewall, this breaks many things including remote access. So I have a
machine perpetually in high firewall mode because unless it is actuall
connected to a wireless network it assumes the auto-allocated IP is a
connection to a dangerous network.

So the question is how can I have vista trust the auto-allocated IP address,
or better yet, not have vista allocate an address automatically at all?

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b