Reflashing the RouterOS using Netinstall

A lot of cases you may be in a situation where the RouterOS is not booting properly. These cases can be from some bugs on the new RouterOS, or from different other reasons. This way, you do not have access to the router anymore. Even if you try to reset it, nothing will change because the problem isn’t in the configuration but on the RouterOS itself.

For this reason, you may need to re-flash completely the RouterOS. What does it mean? Re-flashing means that you get a complete new RouterOS file, and you install it into the router. This way, you can regain access to the router.

To mention that once you re-flash the RouterOS then you will lose all configuration that was saved on the router and all files that were in the router. However, it does not erase the license key that you have on the router and does not reset the RouterBOOT related settings.

To understand better how you can re-flash the RouterOS, let’s do a LAB so you can see step by step how this can be done.

LAB: Refalshing the RouterOS (Netinstall)

The LAB scenario looks different now. I have connected my PC directly to Ether1 of R1. You are always required to connect to the 1^st interface on the router when you want to do the RouterOS re-flashing.

To be able to do the re-flashing, I require to download 2 things from MikroTik website:

[mepr-show rules=”319″ unauth=”message”]

The RouterOS
Netinstall software

We already know the architecture name of our router which is mipbse, let’s get the latest RouterOS for that architecture name and put it on my desktop.

I also need to download Netinstall software. This is a MikroTik software that I need to use when I want to re-flash the RouterOS. Let me get it as well:

Now I have the RouterOS and Netinstall on my PC desktop. Note that Netinstall comes as a compressed file, so you need to decompress it

The 2^nd step to do is to put an IP address on our PC. I will use the range of 192.168.88.2/24 which is already set on my PC as you see here below:

The next step is to open Netinstall and set on Net booting an IP of 192.168.88.1 so I am on the same range of the IP that I have on my PC:

I have set the IP to 192.168.88.1 and also, I have put the RouterOS inside a folder called RouterOS and I have pointed to that folder. This way, the Netinstall will look to that folder and take the RouterOS which is there to install it into the router.

The upcoming step is the most important one. You need to take the power cable out of the router, press on the reset button (keep pressing) then put the power cable back in. You have to wait until the Led stops flashing then you release the pressure. This way, you will see that the Router will be showing up on the Netinstall. Let’s do this experiment (Note: if it doesn’t work for you, please disable your PC antivirus/firewall because this can block the communication between your PC and Netinstall).

I can see clearly that my router has shown up. I will click on Install to start installing the new RouterOS to the router. The process may take a few minutes because it needs to format the hard drive of the router then transfer the new RouterOS to the router and then reboot the router.

Here it is already transferring the RouterOS to the router:

Now the file has been transferred completely. If the router doesn’t reboot by itself then try to check if you can login to Winbox. If not, then please do a manual reboot for it.