Jbbs thank you for your insight, it saved me a great deal of frustration.
The recovery form did not work on my router, so I had to logon to the d-link interface, which then presented pages to force you through there setup process and updated to the latest software. I discovered later that you can circumvent the d-link proces and go directly to the Firmware Update page by entering https://192.168.0.1/UpdateFirmware.html in the browser after the login page.
I downgraded the firmware to d-link's 1.04, the recovery gui was visible again and I updated to openwrt like normal.