Deformed battery broke AirPort on PowerBook 12 resulting in self assigned IP?

Bought a PowerBook 12" 1.33Ghz 1.25GB RAM about 4 weeks ago. The thing worked beautifully.

Ordered cheap new battery from Amazon. Battery arrived dented/deformed on the corner pointing to center of PB when inserted. Had to apply some force to put it in. Battery worked, but my PB Airport immediately showed an inability to recognize and join my home Wifi network from sleep or after being turned back on.

Knowing that the AirPort is inserted through the battery bay, I removed the battery and never put it back in (returned it back to Amazon for a refund). The deformed battery was in the PB for no more than 20-30 minutes and only put in once.

Now the PB is unable to join known WiFi networks. It displays the "self-assigned IP address" information in Network Preferences>Advanced>TCP/IP. This would offur on every network I tried to join, home, work, free public network, etc.

After extensive searching I realized that I need to delete apple.com.alf.plist from the Administrator>Library>Preferences folder.

So, if I delete alf.plist from the above folder I am able to join the network and go online, like right now at home. It is obviously annoying having to delete that file each time.

Questions:

1. is there a permanent fix for this "self-assigned IP address" problem?

2. did I break the PBs AirPort by insering the defective battery and would the problems be fixed with a new AirPort?

Thanks for any input.