I have found the ONLY way to guarantee the initrd.bin and zImage files don't get corrupted when you copy them to the CF card is to do it on a Linux box. Windows just can't handle these files correctly for some reason.
I agree with Mickey on this one. Solve the boot problem (answered here before) before trying to fix the networking or asking people to troubleshoot the wifi card. The kernel mismatch is a much bigger issue in your case. Just my 2c