You don't say what OS your laptop is using.
windows XP, 2000, 95, 98 & ME are plug & play OS's, they detect the card upon boot up and load the necc driver if it is already installed on the computer.
Windows NT is not plug & play.
However, once the driver is installed on the machine, then the device should work even after it has been removed & re-installed. Does your laptop have more than one PCMCIA (card) socket-if you replaced the card in the other socket, then the machine will need the driver reloading, once done though the machine should work fine
My laptop account is limited and when I bought a Belkin wireless card, I had to get the adminstrator at work to install it because I didn't have sufficient priviledges. The card worked fine until one day I removed it to try in my wife's laptop. When I reinserted it I got the same error message - you have to be part of the administrator's group to add hardware.
I had to get my IT guy to log on as an administrator to add the card but is there any way of avoiding this problem? I did think that the machine was switched off when I removed the card in the first place. How does the OS know I took the card out?

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic