Ok... I am having some issues with commview for wifi 6.3 and I am in need of a new (free/cheap) tool for wifi packet sniffing. I have a strong preference for GUI since my boss has no idea and wants to be able to see what's going on. Anyone have any suggestions?

Further, if anyone could explain to me why commview is freking out and telling me that I'm in compatibility mode (when I'm not) it would be helpful. Thanks!

I'd also recommend Wireshark. You might find this list useful as well.

shouldn't any wireless card work? I know sometimes there are hoops to jump through. How are you testing without a card with commview?

if anyone knows how to listen to a wifi network from the outside with wireshark, that info would be mucho helpful as well. 

Thanks for the advice. I'm an information management officer in the military and my job at the moment is to play red-hat and show these guys how easy it is to break certain encryption. After contacting the techies at Tamosoft, I have resolved the issue with that program, works fine now. Anyone interested in wifi packet capture, trust me, this program, while expensive, is probably one of the best and most user friendly ones out there.
Now I just have to aquire the fundage to get the full version.  sometimes piracy isn't the crime...sometimes the crime is charging $1000 for a single-purpose computer program and damn-near forcing people to pirate the software. What a shame. Thanks again!

going back to Ketchup's idea of Linux... Aircrack Suite?

libpcap is free and so is WireShark. It will run on both windows and Linux, and probably some other operating systems. Kismet is really great for monitoring and sniffing wireless networks, you might want to check that out.

Jimbob