Two routers on same network?

[Skywalker93]

I am helping out a friend who has a small business, and his network consists of 1 networked printer, 3 XP Pro desktop PCs, 1 XP Pro laptop, and 1 Win2k3 server. His office is completely wired and connected to a broadband connection by LinkSys 8 port VPN router (RV082). He is presently using DHCP from the router and not the server.

He purchased a Linksys WRT54G wireless router, and would like to connect that to his existing network so that he can use his laptop wirelessly when he meets with his employees in the breakroom/meeting room.

How do I configure the wireless router to act as only an "access point" and not a router. Obviously the two routers come from the factory with the exact same IP address, so I have changed the IP address on the wireless router from .1 to .2, and the server is .3. The rest of the clients are DHCP.

When the laptop detects the wireless network, it merely says that it's detected but cannot connect. It seems that I've overlooked something and I'd bet it's something simple.

Can somebody tell me what I forgot?

Thanks!

[Crastabule]

Configure your wireless router with the address 192.168.2.1, and your main router 192.168.1.1, or something similar. Hook up a cable from your router to your wireless router's WAN port, or the port that says cable/DSL. DHCP should be turned on for both of the routers.
This way, your wireless router hands out an address to the laptop, the router hands out an address to the wireless router, and your ISP hands out an address to your router.

Having 2 routers on the same segment isn't going to work unless routing is turned off and you are using it as a switch.

You should still be able to access the server from your wireless connection. If this doesn't work, I'm tired, and apologize.

Oh, and be sure to lock down the wireless with WPA or better, oherwise the data thieves can access your server wirelessly.

[NooNoo]

As far as I know, the ports are a switch on the linksys 54g, it only routes from the WAN port, so don't plug anything into the WAN port.

Turn off DHCP on the linksys 54g, set the ips in your original post but don't forget to configure the vpn linksys dhcp scope to 192.168.x.4 to x.254

Now you to the wireless problem. How have you got security configured on the 54g? WEP,WPA? nothing? Start with nothing. Try to get the laptop to connect... if it pulls an ip starting 169, configure tcp/ip in the properties of the laptop wireless nic to use a gateway for the main vpn router. Try to connect again. Post when you get this far.