Today I was playing a bit with my router, trying to explore what all I can do. Actually I was trying to enable port forwarding, though it didn't work yet. I noticed that in the router there is an option to upgrade, I click on it and it said that there is an update available, I downloaded the new firmware "WGR614v9-V1.1.2.30.chk", but when I uploaded it on the router, the upgrade procedure started but failed and as I feared, the router stopped working at all. I also reset the router, it didn't help either.
I search and found this link, where it is explained very well on how to fix your router in such situations.
I am just repeating the steps here, with very little changes.
- Disconnect the router from all cables except the power cable.
- Push reset button for 30 secs.
- Without releasing reset button, disconnect power cord.
- Hold the reset button for another 30 secs.
- Replug the power cord.
- Still hold the reset button for another 30 secs.
- Release the reset button and give the router about 10 secs to resettle.
- Disconnect power cord for another 10 secs and then reconnect.
- All should be in default settings now.
After that I connected the LAN wire with my computer and tried to open the default ip 192.168.1.1 and nothing happened. I also tried to ping but in vain.
What to do if you are not able to access 192.168.1.1
If pinging 192.168.1.1 does not work, check the IP Address of your computer and make sure it is assigned an IP address in the subnet of the router IP. For simplicity sake you can assume "192.168.1.x" is good. If you do not have a good IP, the DHCP Server might not be working. So set your IP manually to something like 192.168.1.77 with 192.168.1.1 as your gateway and then try pinging the router again.
Power the router on with a continuous ping running in a command window:
ping -t -w 2 192.168.1.1
(The -w 2 parameter forces a lower timeout for the ping answer, this makes easier to get an answer from the bricked router.)
Prepare your PC, firmware file and TFTP software and play with the timing of powering it on and starting the TFTP session just after applying power (or as soon as you start to see ping replies). If you try it a number of times (at least 10) you will probably rescue the router with no fuss!
Microsoft Windows contains a TFTP client. Windows Vista will require that you enable it in Programs and Features. With TFTP, all of the information about the transfer is specified during the initial setup; there is little client/server interaction as compared with standard FTP. To flash a router using Microsoft Windows, open a command prompt, change to the directory containing the original firmware to use for this boot (this example assumes the firmware file name is firmware.chk), and then enter the following command (assuming your router IP-address is 192.168.1.1):
tftp -i 192.168.1.1 PUT WGR614v9-V1.1.2.30.chk
Here I gave the path of the latest firmware. The command will take few seconds to finish.
If you don't have a TFTP client installed, it doesn't work or something else, then try using this TFTP program called tftp2 available here (this will start the download): tftp2.exe
Now your Netgear WGR614v9 is working like before, but with latest firmware with default settings, and all there is left to do is set it up using the normal web interface using http://192.168.1.1!
