Just brought a brand new Hikvision DS-2CD2432F-IW from China

[pozzello]

what is your PC's IP address? it must be 192.0.0.128.

"i am now plugging it directly into my PC": don't do that. plug the PC and the camera into a switch.
without it, the PC and/or the cam will 'hunt' for the network and may never connecto to each other long enuf to complete the flash.

 

[sweet1]

I tried again by connecting it to the router and I managed to flash it

The camera's re still in chinese but I got around this by using Blue Iris

happy days!