I'm at a complete loss here...

Net goes into a 4 port Netgear router. 3 ports are directly connected to computers, one runs down to another room.

In that room is a lynksys router, that used to be a 3Com hub.

The line from the netgear goes into the router, then 2 computers are attached to that router. When I hook it all up the 2 computers work fine for about 30 seconds then not only do they stop working, all computers attached to the netgear stop working.

I did this exact setup last summer with the 3Com and now it simply does not work, thought it was the hub but it does the same thing with the lynksys

I am so very confused and I've tried all number of things

One of which was make the linksys *not* a DHCP server.. since then I have not been able to access that router with it's default gateway.. which is also bad

Well first I'm going to ask you a simpel question, are you SURE that your using the right wording are they BOTH ROUTERS or are they switches (routers are things which are used to connect networks to the internet, switches are like hub's but they send packets to one computer rather then all there computers they are connected to) once you replied I'll continue to help you, OK?

Have you tried switching the two routers? Also, have you tried changing the subnet mask? Lower subnets don't allow for as many clients, and although it shuold metter, since you are only assigning one IP to the 2nd router, who knows what could be causing it. You should also make sure the two routers aren't set to assign the same range of IP addresses, and that the second router is automatically obtaining its IP address AND DNS information.