LG WH14NS40 w/ 1.02MK can't see UHD, still plays BD and DVD fine

[Flubly]

Did quite a bit of searching and didn't see an issue quite like mine.

UHD discs do not show up. Disc spins for a while and then no disc is seen in the drive. The thing with me, though, is that the drive works perfectly fine otherwise. Can play blurays and dvds all day.

I have an LG WH14NS40 manufactured in Feb. 2016 w/ SVN code:NS50 printed on the drive itself.
MKV showed the drive platform as MT1959. So, all the pre-requisites seem to be in order.

The guide says, "WH14NS40 on any Firmware directly to > WH16NS60 1.02MK"
I was on 1.05 and used version 1.3.0 of the GUI SDF tool to flash HL-DT-ST-BD-RE_WH16NS60-1.02-NM00100-211810291936.bin that is found in the "The all you need firmware pack.zip" provided in the same guide. I found confirmation on a different thread that that .bin file is indeed 1.02MK.

Flashing was successful without errors. Makemkv shows this:

mkvinfo.jpg (41.24 KiB) Viewed 3128 times

I shut down the computer and unplugged for a minute but that didn't change anything.

Any insight?

[Flubly]

So, I got it working.

First step was cleaning the lens element on the drive. I was a bit hesitant to do this because the drive already works, I've had it for years and still use it for regular discs, and I only have a couple UHD discs that have been gifted to me (don't even have a 4k screen yet). But I thought what the hell.

This got the disc to be recognized but I couldn't get it to play. I believe the next thing that got it to play was updating the license key for makemkv as the beta I had expired. I also enabled SGX for my processor but I'm not sure that is relevant when playing through mpc-hc instead of powerdvd like I am.

On to navigating tonemapping!

[Billycar11]

So, I got it working.

First step was cleaning the lens element on the drive. I was a bit hesitant to do this because the drive already works, I've had it for years and still use it for regular discs, and I only have a couple UHD discs that have been gifted to me (don't even have a 4k screen yet). But I thought what the hell.

This got the disc to be recognized but I couldn't get it to play. I believe the next thing that got it to play was updating the license key for makemkv as the beta I had expired. I also enabled SGX for my processor but I'm not sure that is relevant when playing through mpc-hc instead of powerdvd like I am.

On to navigating tonemapping!

sgx not relevant for others reading it 100% not needed for unofficial playback.