I have recently ordered an ESP-03 module (ESP8266-ESP-03-Remote-Serial-Port-WIFI-Transceiver-Wireless-Module-p-961244.html[/banggood])and I put it onto a DIY breakout board in order to be able to plug it in to a breadboard. I also ordered an FTDI module (http://www.banggood.com/FT232RL-FTDI-USB-To-TTL-Serial-Converter-Adapter-Module-For-Arduino-p-917226.html).
I first tested the FTDI module and I'm not sure if this proves that it works or not but I connected RX and TX together on the module and when I sent anything over the serial monitor in the Arduino software I would get the message straight back. I think it works. The drivers I used were found here http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm. I am using Windows XP 32bit because I only have a Mac that I don't have administrator access to and the Windows XP computer.
Yesterday I had spent hours trying to get the "Ready" message to come up on the monitor (I finally did it after I realised that GPIO15 needed to be grounded) but it wouldn't respond to any AT commands. I found out that my board ran at 9600 baud. That's ok because I have read that for some people the AT flash didn't come on the chip and the solution was to flash it yourself. I put it in programming mode (pulling GPIO0 to ground) and tried flashing it multiple times using NodeMCU and ESP8266 flasher with binary found on electrodragon (https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B3dUKfqzZnlwRXhBTmlhaTROTmM&usp=sharing) with no luck. ESP8266 flasher says failed to connect. In the log file for ESP8266 Flasher it says that the access is denied for COM7 which is the COM port for my FTDI module. Could this be the problem? When I tried NodeMCU the progress bar went along a little bit and then I got the red icon in the bottom left. Could this mean it bricked the ESP by installing half of the binary? It got late so I gave up and went to sleep.
Today I tried to test whether I could get the "Ready" message again and no matter what I tried, whatever baud rate, GPIO0 pulled to ground or not I only got gibberish. GPIO15 is connected to ground by the way, I triple checked. Gibberish is still good though, right? It means something is happening? So I tried ESPtool from the command line because I thought maybe since it is very bare (has no interface) it might work but again no success, it says "Failed to connect".
I am not sure if that is enough information or if I left anything out but I hope it is a simple fix. I am fairly sure it is not the soldering considering I got the "Ready" message once before and I have tested it with a multimeter. Thank you for your time and I hope that you know more than me about this subject and can help me.