www.makemkv.com

For anyone looking - I read through pages and pages of forum posts to bring you this one simple and easily understood set of paragraphs - I bought an LG WH16NS40 with 1.04 firmware on it, and rented two 4k blu-rays. The drive would not even recognize the disc was present after spinning up.
Long story short -

Download the zip below - open the flasher tool. Select the folder with the arrow in it and select the firmware that says 3.10 in the title. Flash it. Restart. Then flash the second firmware in it - which has the correct model name in it and is UHD friendly courtesy of our genius friends here in the forums. Thank you, you all have helped greatly.

Warning Read this FULLY Before using this flasher> https://www.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic ... 16&t=19634
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hrKH-o ... sp=sharing

This post is almost guaranteed to cause problems I'm afraid. This does not give people enough information to SAFELY flash an NS40 drive. Why? Because not all NS40 drives are made the same. People MUST check the sticker on the drive and can ONLY flash drives with the NS50 SVC code on the sticker. Meaning drives manufactured after late 2015. If they attempt to flash a non-NS50 SVC code NS40 drive, they will brick it in a way that's a massive pain in the ass to fix. So while your instructions are great for those with the proper drive, far too many people don't heed the warning to check the sticker on the drive before blindly flashing and end up with a bricked drive. Therefore, I'm posting this to warn people that these instructions will work great for the proper drive, but, be careful.

SamuriHL wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 31, 2019 2:56 am

This post is almost guaranteed to cause problems I'm afraid. This does not give people enough information to SAFELY flash an NS40 drive. Why? Because not all NS40 drives are made the same. People MUST check the sticker on the drive and can ONLY flash drives with the NS50 SVC code on the sticker. Meaning drives manufactured after late 2015. If they attempt to flash a non-NS50 SVC code NS40 drive, they will brick it in a way that's a massive pain in the ass to fix. So while your instructions are great for those with the proper drive, far too many people don't heed the warning to check the sticker on the drive before blindly flashing and end up with a bricked drive. Therefore, I'm posting this to warn people that these instructions will work great for the proper drive, but, be careful.

Okay good point - this is for Feb 2019 and newer drives that come with 1.04 firmware on them.

It needs to be updated in the latest -mk package because the label on the folder is literally "WH16NS40-NS50" and it only contains one bin file with the same label. I don't know anyone who would not assume it would fit both service codes without doing a bunch of reading as well. I most certainly didn't get that impression with my reading, although it wasn't what I was looking for so I could have missed it.

Lets add to the fact that the latest -mk firmware now contains a firmware for only 6 months of a drive being out, and not the last 4 years of the same drive in an earlier revision? Sounds odd to the common sense test to me...

I just received my WH16NS40 optical drive from Amazon yesterday, manufactured Feb 2019, Service code NS50, but the firmware version is 1.03. The original post indicated this flasher program will work only with 1.04. Is there a solution for the version I have? Thank you.

Pinned on top of uhd drive section I have videos and everything

Billycar11 wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 02, 2019 5:25 am

Pinned on top of uhd drive section I have videos and everything

+1 to this. In theory - according to everything I have read, the unlocked flasher was built to handle the protections that showed up in 1.03, though that may have never been fully implemented.

That being said - the videos are a great help. If you have questions this is a great community to answer them.

avenger09123 wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 13, 2019 1:55 am

+1 to this. In theory - according to everything I have read, the unlocked flasher was built to handle the protections that showed up in 1.03, though that may have never been fully implemented.

I'm not sure what you read or think you read, but, this is very wrong. The patched flashers have nothing to do with getting around the protections in these new firmware versions. It's the MK firmware that Mike creates that do so. The latest firmware versions for several drives disables the normal "Downgrade Enabled" firmware that we've all been using. They've added additional protection to also remove dosflash compatibility. Mike patches those firmware versions to create MK versions that allow LibreDrive to work. And they restore the ability to downgrade should you desire the ability to do so. That's the magic sauce, as it were. The patched flashers simply allow flashing these firmware to various drives.

Okay, cool. Well I guess I could be more specific - but as I was reading some of the longer threads relating to this drive - it appeared that the work was being done to the flasher itself rather than the firmware being put on the drive as it wasn't even getting to the point of being able to attempt to START to flash the new firmware on it due to the 1.04 protections, and I could have been wrong, again, that was just my impression at the time of writing.

That being said - Mike apparently hasn't patched the latest MK firmware yet to handle these new NS50 1.04 drives.
I tried the straight flashing with the -mk version for ours.
I tried the bit modification at 0x0c156 or wherever (can't remember) going to DE from FF.
Given that ONLY the workaround that's functional right now flashing the 3.10 firmware on it and then reverting to the 1.03 -mk version, I just wanted to save someone else the 2 hours of reading and experimentation.

You can use the ns55 mk 1.04 in place of the asus firmware. That's been released and at least keeps it in the family so to speak. Mike can patch any of these newer firmware for mk but he has to have the firmware bin to do it.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

Thanks for sharing this great post

Thx for this post! It's simple and working.

Wanted to add this this worked perfectly as well in early 2020.

Also wanted to clear up some of the confusion at the start of this thread. This model drive ( LG WH16NS40 ) has been in production for a long time, and this flashing method only works on drives manufactured after late 2015. These can be identified by looking on the white label on the top of the drive. In the lower right hand corner, if it says "SVC Code NS50" this method will work.

Now, practically speaking, if you purchased a new drive on Amazon and then came here looking to flash it, this method will almost certainly will work, as all older stock is likely long gone by now. Still, check the label. I bought 2 drives new in early 2020 from Amazon, and both were manufactured 7/19, firmware 1.04, and SVC Code NS50.

Hi, I was planning on using this method with an WH16NS40 NS50 1.04 firmware drive I just got, but I wanted to know if there was any way I can back-up or restore the firmware I have if anything goes awry. This is probably not the thread to ask, but does anybody know?

chaquator wrote: ↑

Fri May 08, 2020 10:23 pm

Hi, I was planning on using this method with an WH16NS40 NS50 1.04 firmware drive I just got, but I wanted to know if there was any way I can back-up or restore the firmware I have if anything goes awry. This is probably not the thread to ask, but does anybody know?

you cant backup 1.04 just flash WH16NS60 1.02 mk and done and then to 1.00 if you use other rippers except anydvd

Thank you for posting this!

After reading lots of very informative, but general posts on the subject, it was nice to find a match for my use case and eliminate any concerns. I've documented my process and drive information below in case anyone else lands here wondering if it applies to them.

== Problem ==

Top Gun 4k UHD (UPC 0 32429 33539 5; purchased from Amazon)
* There are two discs, a blue standard bluray and a black 4k uhd
* The blue disc reads and rips in MakeMKV
* The black disc shows up as "no disc inserted"

== Drive Information from Sticker ==

Model: WH16NS40
Date: 2019 07 17
ROM Version: 1.04 **THE PROBLEM**
Manufactured: July 2019
SVC Code: NS50 **MUST MATCH**

== Original MakeMKV Drive Infromation ==

Drive Information
OS device name: \Device\CdRom0
Current profile: BD-ROM
Manufacturer: HL-DT-ST
Product: BD-RE WH16NS40
Revision: 1.04
Serial number: KLGJ7I90552
Firmware date: 2119-01-04 13:48
Bus encryption flags: 17
Highest AACS version: 68

LibreDrive Information
Status: Possible, not yet enabled **THE PROBLEM**
Drive platform: MT1959 **MUST MATCH**

== First Flash ==

* Downloaded and extracted archive
* Run BH14NS40_N1.00-A4_patched.exe
* Open file (folder w/ arrow button), select ASUS-BW-16D1HT-3.10-WM01601-211901041014.bin
* Flash (play button)
* Restart computer

== First Flash MakeMKV Drive Information ==

Drive Information
OS device name: D:
Manufacturer: ASUS
Product: BW-16D1HT
Revision: 3.10
Serial number: KLGJ7I90552
Firmware date: 2119-01-04 10:14
Bus encryption flags: 1F
Highest AACS version: 68

LibreDrive Information
Status: Enabled
Drive platform: MT1959
Firmware type: Patched (microcode access re-enabled)
Firmware version: 3.10
DVD all regions: Yes
BD raw data read: Yes
BD raw metadata read: Yes
Unrestricted read speed: Yes

== Second Flash ==

* Ran BH14NS40_N1.00-A4_patched.exe
* Open file (folder w/ arrow button), select HL-DT-ST-BD-RE_WH16NS40-NS50-1.03-NM00600-211711211653.bin
* Flash (play button)
* Restart computer

== Second Flash MakeMKV Drive Information ==

Drive Information
OS device name: D:
Manufacturer: HL-DT-ST
Product: BD-RE WH16NS40
Revision: 1.03
Serial number: KLGJ7I90552
Firmware date: 2117-11-21 16:53
Bus encryption flags: 17
Highest AACS version: 68

LibreDrive Information
Status: Enabled
Drive platform: MT1959
Firmware type: Patched (microcode access re-enabled)
Firmware version: 1.03
DVD all regions: Yes
BD raw data read: Yes
BD raw metadata read: Yes
Unrestricted read speed: Yes

== Result ==

Reads both the black (UHD) and blue discs!