Created attachment 28312 [details]
Full lshal output

Hi! I use gentoo linux distribution, and for quite a long time HAL was just working.

But I have recently updated HAL to version 0.5.13 (can't remember previous version), and the things went a bit crazy. To be exact, Network-manager produced error message for my Broadcom wifi NIC "Assertion Driver!=NULL failed." upon registering the device. I started by checking lshal output. Here it is:
udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_14e4_4312'
  info.linux.driver = 'b43-pci-bridge'  (string)
  info.parent = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_10de_2fd'  (string)
  info.product = 'BCM4312 802.11a/b/g'  (string)
  info.subsystem = 'pci'  (string)
  info.udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_14e4_4312'  (string)
  info.vendor = 'Broadcom Corporation'  (string)
  linux.hotplug_type = 2  (0x2)  (int)
  linux.subsystem = 'pci'  (string)
  linux.sysfs_path = '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:03.0/0000:03:00.0'  (string)
  pci.device_class = 2  (0x2)  (int)
  pci.device_protocol = 0  (0x0)  (int)
  pci.device_subclass = 128  (0x80)  (int)
  pci.linux.sysfs_path = '/sys/devices/
                        pci0000:00/0000:00:03.0/0000:03:00.0' (string)
  pci.product = 'BCM4312 802.11a/b/g'  (string)
  pci.product_id = 17170  (0x4312)  (int)
  pci.subsys_product = 'Broadcom 802.11a/b/g WLAN'  (string)
  pci.subsys_product_id = 4977  (0x1371)  (int)
  pci.subsys_vendor = 'Hewlett-Packard Company'  (string)
  pci.subsys_vendor_id = 4156  (0x103c)  (int)
  pci.vendor = 'Broadcom Corporation'  (string)
  pci.vendor_id = 5348  (0x14e4)  (int)

So, it looks like a normal WIFI device. Note the driver string, it exists and is valid. I have decided that  NM does some nasty magic on the string, so I have checked the NM source code (src/nm-hal-manager.c:252) and found out that the driver_name string is the return value of this  function:
=======
static char * nm_get_device_driver_name (LibHalContext *ctx, const char *origdev_udi)
{
        char *driver_name = NULL;
        nm_debug("entered nm_get_device_driver_name");

        if (origdev_udi && libhal_device_property_exists (ctx, origdev_udi, "info.linux.driver", NULL)) {
                char *drv;
                nm_debug("found property");

                drv = libhal_device_get_property_string (ctx, origdev_udi, "info.linux.driver", NULL);
                if (drv) {
                        nm_debug("copied device name %s",drv);
                        driver_name = g_strdup (drv);
                        libhal_free_string (drv);
                }
        }
        return driver_name;
}
========
As you can see I have added some nice debug, so I saw a nice result - for the Ethernet controller the driver_name was acquired correctly, and for WIFI libhal decides that there is no such string (I didn't see "found property" in log for WIFI). 
Full lshal output is attached, you can find Ethernet device there by "forcedeth" keyword.
So, I have decided that the problem lies somewhere inside libhal, but I have failed to locate it. For now I have a workaround (I have disabled the assertion and NM works fine), but the issue needs a FIX, not a workaround.
Software versions are:
hal-0.5.13-r2, hal-0.5.13-r2, udev-141-r1, policykit-0.9-r1, consolekit-0.3.0-r1;  linux kernel 2.6.30-r4, 2.6.29-r3.
Feel free to ask for info and good luck=)