Help with network/internet/extreme setup please

Woke up this morning and had no internet.
Unplugged both my cable modem and extreme, replugged and still nothing.
Did a reset on my extreme with a paper clip.
That seemed to do the trick for about 5 minutes before I lost connection again.

I then reset again using the paper clip and tried to setup in Airport Utility.
Kept getting "unexpected error" message repeatedly.
Nothing I did seemed to work. Oh well I thought, maybe it's time for a new one.

Check my wires and they seem to be fine.
I can get internet straight from cable modem to iMac no problems.
When I try to connect hard wire from extreme and modem to iMac, I can't get no connections.

Went out and bought the new tower extreme and I'm still having issues.

I can get wifi throughout the house but no ethernet connection to my iMac in my office.
When I was able to get a connection from extreme to iMac, I lost my wifi.

What the heck am I doing wrong?

Help??
I've spent at least 3 hours now trying to figure this out.

 

Yeah I've tried that and nothing happened.
I swear I'm ready to chuck everything out the window