A friend  managed to brick a GL.  I thought "easy", because I had reflashed  one of mine.

Hours later I had repeatedly tried three different tftp programmes under W8.1 without success.

I put UBUNTU 14.04 on a USB stick, booted it, downloaded a REAL (unix/Linux) tftp and loaded  the firmware first try.

Sometimes there's no substitute for real software.

73,  Graham ZL3GSL

Sometimes you can outsmart windows in this regard by plugging the 54G and the PC into a switch, or even the back side of another 54G.   Turn off DHCP and configure your network connection appropriately on the PC.  

Of course, my argument is that you  should not have to "outsmart" an OS. 

The best  version of Windows was 3.31 Windows for Workgroups.  (I might still have a set of 8 floppies).

Windows 8.1 is rather special.  It attempts to make a computer with a big screen (non-touch) appear and work like a small touch-screen  phone.

I don't like it.  (I don't own a small touch-screen phone, and don't want one).

Unfortunately, much of the software I use works only on Windows.

73,  Graham,ZL3GSL