How to flash DD-WRT firmware onto a wireless router

Dis­claimer:

Before flash­ing your router, it’s usu­ally good to know why you’re doing it.  This arti­cle I wrote shows sev­eral rea­sons to do it. See What is DD-WRT?  If you’re sat­is­fied with your life, your occu­pa­tion, and your cur­rent com­puter, maybe you should hold off until you get the wire­less antsy.

That being said, even if you have fan­tas­tic rea­sons, you run a risk of “brick­ing” your router, mak­ing your cool router fairly worth­less.  So, that being said, there is noth­ing to fear.  The bet­ter care you take, and the more exact you are in fol­low­ing the steps, the bet­ter chances you have of hav­ing some fun with DD-WRT.  The DD-WRT Wiki is a great resource, because it links to many per­sonal expe­ri­ences of many wire­less enthu­si­asts, and thus you can learn exactly what to do for your par­tic­u­lar model of router.

The very FIRST thing you should do is go to this link here and search for your exact model of router:  Router Data­base  Make sure your router is sup­ported!  If it is not sup­ported, then you take seri­ous risk in brick­ing the router.

The best, best thing to do is to fol­low the exact steps for the par­tic­u­lar router out­lined in the DD-WRT forums or on the DD-WRT wiki.  For exam­ple, the tuto­r­ial I worked off was here.  How­ever, this tuto­r­ial is focus­ing on  how to flash DD-WRT firmware onto a Linksys WRT54G Router v8, and is a great exam­ple o

f sev­eral things you’r ll run into while flash­ing your router.  So, here goes:

1.) Down­load the VXWorks-Killer firmware, as well the Micro Generic for firmware before you start flashing

2.) Plug your router into the LAN port on your router, NOT YOUR WAN port

 

3.) Change your computer’s IP address to 192.168.1.5 (any­thing but .1.1)

 

4.)Do a 30 –30–30 reset on the router

.  See my tuto­r­ial for how to do this.

 

 

5.) Go into the admin­is­tra­tor con­sole (IP address: 192.168.1.1)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(The default cre­den­tials are admin/admin)

6.)Upload the VXWorks-Killer firmware.

DO NOT RESET THE ROUTER  OR NAVIGATE AWAY FROM THE PAGE (wait about 5 min­utes)  If it comes up with a page that says “Man­age­ment Mode”  just sit tight, refresh a cou­ple times and it should ask you to reboot the router.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At this point, power cycle the router.

(Once the router boots up, you will NOT be able to browse the router)

 

 

 

7.) Fol­low my tuto­r­ial to use TFTP to upload the Micro Generic firmware

8.) Once this is done, you just need to change the admin­is­tra­tor password.

 

 

 

 

 

 

9.) You’re finished!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

****Update

We all love pic­ture tuto­ri­als, but if you’re like me, than you learn bet­ter from video tuto­ri­als.  I have just uploaded a video tuto­r­ial of how to do this.