Windows 2000 and Windows XP have a built-in TFTP client and it can be used to flash other firmwares than openwrt e.g your default linksys firmware or whatever brand you have.

Important: If you have a personal firewall, make sure it is disabled for this part. Some personal firewalls will not give any indication that they have blocked the tftp client. Please bear in mind that you should only be connected to the router when your personal firewall is disabled to avoid any nastiness, and remember to re-enable it when you are done.

Windows 2000/XP TFTP Client short Instructions

    * Go To Control Panel - Network Connections, then right click and go on properties of you LAN port and change to the following:

    * Open two command windows (Start-Run-Enter "cmd")
    * In one window, type "ping -t -w 5 192.168.1.1" and press enter. 192.168.1.1 is the router IP.
    * Ping will continuously try to contact the wrt with 5 ms timeout instead of default 4000 ms. Keep this running:

    * In the other window, prepare the tftp command "tftp -i 192.168.1.1 PUT OpenWrt-gs-code.bin". Do not press enter yet!
    * Unplug the router for 3 secs and plug it back in
    * In the ping window it will start saying "Hardware Error"
    * Return to the tftp window. As soon as the ping window starts to answer again, press enter in the tftp window so that the PUT command will be executed.
    * The image should now be flashed without multiple tries.
    * If ping starts with "Hardware Error", then starts to answer, and then returns to "Hardware Error" again for a short moment, you waited too long.

as you can see in the above window it took a few tries to get it to work, the first few i waited 30secs which is what i normally do when i want to reset the router but this time i tried 3secs and worked perfectly.

Do NOT unplug your router for 30secs or so then plug it back in and press enter to issue the PUT command when you see the ping window pinging again, unplug your router for just 2-5secs or else it will probably not work.

Maybe better to post this in the how to section

I was trying to flash my Wireless Linksys WRT54G with its default/Original Firware and i was using the commad Prompt but it kept giving me timeout and i follow all instructions as you state. Could you please help me out here

It did not work from me too.

I have a very old version of Openwrt (I think Nov-2004). I would like to flash it to DD-WRT. Anyone got any idea how?

I tried TFTP it kept on gave me Timeout. I tried Linksys TFTP.exe utility and it kept on retried.

Help!!!

Same problem here!
Don't wanna throw my router out of the window!

i just installed openWrt and i want now to remove it , how can i do that . i enabled shh on the router and how can i change the firmware now ?

I tried this and it did not work for me either. The output I got was not like predicted here.

I suspect the problem is, that when my router is turned off, the network itself is down (since it is the router that creates the network, and the only other computer I have connected is the one I use to upload the firmware via tftp). Coud that be the problem? Once the router reinitialized the LAN, it cannot accept the tftp upload because it is the bootloader level tftp that has to accept the firmware.

Is that the case? If it is, it would be very useful to have this howto explain, how to add the router to network to make it a simple participant in a network, and how to find the router in a network that has another pattern of IP space: not 192.168.1... but, e.g., 192.168.25.... (like the network I could use, and I am not an administrator...)

Hi everyone.

Did you try the thing with the switch between the machine and the router? I used this method with a linux machine (ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon) and it worked fine. Try a linux machine if it is at hand. Maybe this article helps, too: http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Deinstalling

MacGoever