CrossOver cable required or not ?!

If the switches have auto sensing ports or auto-mdx, then you can use either a crossover or straight through. If the ports are not auto sensing then you must use a crossover.

hmm , well reason why i'm asking is because i'm having freeze up problems where both switches freeze and drop all connected workstations to them. I've replaced both switches with new ones and still the same problem so I was wondering if it could be the crossover cable tingiee. any other clues why it could be freezing up .. and it happens randomly ... after i reset the switches things work again.

Have you tried running one switch at a time to see if it locks up?
Heat issue?
Are you stacking the switches in series or parallel with another switch between them?

Only if its two of them , and no heat Issues since they are far away from each other.

The way things are connected are as follows:

Windows 2003 Server machine connects to one of the switches (ex port1) feeding all the workstations on that first switch , then port 2 connects to the 2nd switch feeding all the workstations connected on that one. so dont know if that's series or parrarel ?!

Are all systems on the same network, not running a dhcp server on both servers.
Any other switches, routers, etc in the network?

yup all workstations on the same network , one network, one server , one dhcp.

there is router which is on a seperate lan ... server has two nic's . one that connects to the internet router then to ISP then the 2nd NIC connects to one of these two switches and feeds everything.

p.s. DHCP is disabled on the router not to conflict with the DHCP running on the windows 2003 server and they are on different network subnets anyways.

ex. 192.168.1.254 ( for router -> NIC #1 )

ex 10.10.1.1 ( for local network switches >- NIC # 2)