rmmod rtl8187 hangs

I have a wireless adapter with a Realtek 8187 chipset, and use the rtl8187 kernel module under Fedora 8 (kernel 2.6.26).

Sometimes I'd get disconnected, and the only way to reconnect would be to remove the kernel module (and kill dhclient) and connect again:
killall dhclient
rmmod rtl8187
modprobe rtl8187
ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 essid <wireless network name>
iwconfig wlan0 ap any
dhclient wlan0

The problem is, the machine would hang at rmmod rtl8187, CPU use would go to 100%, and even the reboot would hang at "unloading modules". This was a major annoyance.

The solution turned out to be this: the rmmod only works if wlan0 is up.
So:
ifconfig wlan0 up
rmmod rtl8187
You can even run the ifconfig command in another terminal while the rmmod is hung :-)