In the spirit of sharing I thought I'd create an account here and share my experience.
The method I used to downgrade it to 1.02 was this:
- make a bootable DOS flash drive with Rufus 3.3 on my Windows 10 PC
- copy the dosflash.exe and the dosflash.typ data file to the flash drive.
- on the old machine where the WH14NS40 is installed boot from the flash drive
- run Dosflash at the prompt. Try again if it tells you no ATAPI devices were detected.
- When prompted choose R for read and save the file to something like 'backup.bin'
- shut down the flashing PC when this is done and then put the flash drive back in the Windows PC
- make a copy of 'backup.bin' for safe-keeping. Now make another copy somewhere else.
- Run the EEPROM_Data_Mover.exe and follow the directions. You'll need your backup.bin file and the "clean firmware file" (I used WH14NS40 ver 1.02)
Out of step 8 comes a new modified firmware file I called 'modded.bin' It helps to keep the names short in DOS because you end up having to type them in. - copy 'modded.bin' to the flash drive and take it back over to the flashing PC
- boot from the flash drive and run dosflash again this time in W mode. Specify the file name modded.bin or whatever you called the file created in step 8
Floating around is a dosflash package which contains a dosflash.typ that is missing this line:
Code: Select all
0x24 0x24 0x200 0x20 0xC7 "MediaTek MT1959"
dosflash.exe - EDC26008
dosflash.typ - 53B2DB76
EEPROM_Data_Mover.exe - 2A37A03C
flash_HL-DT-ST_BD-RE_WH14NS40_1.02_NS50.bin (AKA clean firmware) - 509D06F0
Also I should mention in case it's significant that I did the flashing on a 10+ year old foxconn N15235 motherboard which uses AWARD BIOS. The SATA setting that worked was called "compatible," which I believe meant "IDE compatible." I have seen other terminology for this in various BIOS such as "ATAPI", "ATA", "PATA", "EIDE", "Legacy" and I'm sure there are others. Just thought I should mention that because a lot of the how to's are specifically saying "IDE" mode which I have never seen in any BIOS referred to by that name. Most commonly I have seen "ATA."
Also in the process of trying to get Dosflash to work on a new machine (MSI B350M), I hosed an SSD by switching SATA to RAID mode then deleting the array. I figured it wouldn't hurt my data because I never configured an array. The PC was booting in AHCI mode prior to that. Sometimes RAID/ATA are listed together so that's why I thought I would try that. Fortunately this was a really new build and didn't have anything important on it yet. Guess who's installing Windows 10 again tomorrow? Me.
I've made a "downgrade bundle" for this drive containing just the four required files for the WH14NS40 NS50.