Connecting to a DHCP disabled router

Recently I had a need to connect 2 routers together to create a single LAN. The main reason for me was actually laziness, since I didn't want to pull another Ethernet cable through the walls.

In order to configure them correctly I followed the instructions found in:

http://routersetup.blogspot.co.il/2007/08/connecting-two-routers-wired.html

What I didn't follow correctly, was step (3), which is to change the secondary router's IP to one in the main router's IP range.

All was working well, except when I wanted to reconfigure the secondary router, and was unable to do so.

You see, my main router was in the 10.0.0.X range, and the secondary was in the 192.168.2.X range. Since my PC was now receiving an IP in the main router's range, it couldn't connect to the secondary router's web service.

An easy solution would've been to reset the router to the factory settings where the DHCP is enabled. Unfortunately, the reset button on my router didn't work.

To get around that I had to get my PC to change to the secondary router's subnet:

1. Disconnect the secondary router from the main router
2. Go into my PC's network adapter
1. Search for Network Connections
2. Right-click the Local Area Connection
3. Click Properties
4. Click Internet Protocol Version 4 and go into its properties
5. Change to "Use the following IP address:"
6. Enter
1. IP address: an IP in the secondary router's range (for instance 192.168.2.5 in my example) which isn't the IP of the router
2. Subnet mask: in my case it was 255.255.255.0, but even doing 255.255.0.0 works
3. Default gateway: the IP of the secondary router in its domain
   
7. Press OK until you get back to the Local Area Connection
8. Right-click the Local Area Connection
9. Click Disable
10. Double-click the connection to re-enable it

Now, all that remained was to type the router's IP in my browser and I could now enter it as I should.

To not have to do this again every time I want to access my secondary router, I then changed the IP to be one in the main router's range, and rebooted the secondary router. I then undid the changes above (changing the adapter's option to "Obtain and IP address automatically"), connected the secondary router to the main one's LAN port, and connected the PC to the secondary's LAN port.

At this point, I could enter the secondary router's web service through the new IP I gave it.