Help an idiot with a 1st gen WH14NS40

[st4evr]

Dumb luck: After poking around the site, I found the way to restore my drive back to working condition:

NS40 Recovery Image:
Flashed an NS50 firmware to an NS40 drive and can no longer read disks this IMG has all the NS40 FW you need to recover your drive just follow my dos flash video guide linked above
https://www.mediafire.com/file/8by2zqop ... D.zip/file

Now my drive is working, but now it thinks it's a WH16NS40 (1.02 firmware) rather than a WH14NS40, which it actually is. Is that a problem?

Also, it still can't read a UHD disc. The date code on my drive is 2014, which apparently doesn't fare well with the entire UHD flashing process. Should I bother trying to make the drive UHD friendly or just give up?

Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

This entire thread where you posted is a about people breaking, discussing, and warning about those older drives NOT supporting UHD BD content decryption and flashing them incorrectly will brick them. You yourself just found out the hard way by bricking the drive while doing so and how much of a pain it can be to recover it. Can’t have a more clearer example than that.

But to be even more crystal clear if still needed, buy a new compatible drive and move on.

Even more warnings/examples can be found through a quick forum and/or google search if still in doubt or not satisfied.

[jonghotti]

NS40 drives are too old. HW CAN NOT support UHD, no matter what FW you try.

Time for me to buy a new one, I guess... With a recent manufacturing date code.

I'm flush with drives if anyone needs one

[jonghotti]

But to be even more crystal clear if still needed, buy a new compatible drive and move on.

Quoting this

[Billycar11]

I did the same thing but my drive may be toast. I also have a WH14NS40 drive. But mine came with firmware 1.04. I am a real idiot. I actually flashed it successfully. Doing a little research i read that since i had firmware 1.04 i needed to flash it to HL-DT-ST-BD-RE_WH16NS60-1.02-NM00100-211810291936.bin and it worked. But for some dumb reason i figured my goal was to get it to WH14NS40 1.01 or 1.02 so i flashed it again and bricked it. Why could i not leave well enough alone? I am so frustrated right now.

But i tried to fix it by the instructions here. I successfully made a PE Windows, changed my drive to IDE (In my bios it's ATA, that confused me). I ran Dos Flash and the Data Mover. I tried it twice. First i flashed it to WH14NS40_140326_1.03-A0_NOBJ_DE.bin but it didn't work. Second time i flashed it to HL-DT-ST-BD-RE_WH16NS60-1.02-NM00100-211810291936.bin since it was successful the first time around. But it still don't read discs and MakeMKV won't detect it all.

Is there anything else i can try? Or is it officially fried? I'm pretty inexperienced and had to read these instructions quite a few times to get a grasp on it. I had a hard enough time booting to USB. Turned out my computer was trying to boot to my printer. I had to unplug that. That took me forever to figure out.

Putting your drive down to WH14NS40 1.02 or 1.01 is a downgrade from WH16NS60 ns60 has faster read speeds and no sleep bug. This is why I tell people to only flash the drive once it minimizes the risks of something going wrong.

[Billycar11]

Putting your drive down to WH14NS40 1.02 or 1.01 is a downgrade from WH16NS60 ns60 has faster read speeds and no sleep bug. This is why I tell people to only flash the drive once it minimizes the risks of something going wrong.

I may have officially bricked it. I was gonna try and flash it once more but when i run Dos Flash i get this error "MTK vendor intro failed"
I think that's it for me. Time to buy another drive. And what a shame, because i got a steal deal on this one. Only paid $33.91 and it was untested. But i lucked out and it worked. I probably won't get that lucky again. Maybe i can sell this one broken and get some money back. Is it fixable by someone with knowledge?
I just need something so i can play my import Blu Rays and Dvd's. I can always buy a stand alone 4K player later. That was all i wanted, to have a universal player without spending a lot of money. Now i'm throwing it down the drain.

why are you using dos flash!?!?!?!
i though you were only trying to recover it with dosflash once you go to WH16NS60 1.02 there is no more dos flash.
you should only use the unlocked flashers not dos flash, dos flash is only for recovery and backup now

[MartyMcNuts]

I guess because I don't know what I'm doing. If I did I wouldn't have bricked it. Lol
Most of the tutorials go over my head and I try my best to make sense of it. It's usually not simplified enough for my lack of knowledge on the subject. Oh well, lesson learned, time to move on. I already bought another drive off ebay.
But still curious if this one can be fixed.

Just use one of the windows flashers and flash the drive back to NS60 1.02.

[Billycar11]

That's all i had to do? I have so much egg on my face right now. That fixed it. My drive lives again. I feel like such a noob. lol
But thanks so much. I can play both Dvd's and Blu-Ray's again.

But now i wasted $30 on some Dell burner. Guess i will be selling that once i get it. I'd feel bad returning it.
But i do have one question. Does a UHD Friendly drive mean i can actually play 4K movies or just be able to rip them? I tried 2 different players that are suppose to play 4K discs but neither can play it. But it can detect the disc.

You can play them unofficially with the right software direct from disc. official playback is a 100% no

[Billycar11]

Not sure how but my drive bricked itself again. All i did was turn my computer off last night and turned it back on today and now it won't read discs and Makemkv won't detect it again. Makes no sense just turning my computer off would do this. I just played a dvd on it last night. I tried running the windows flasher but i get this error "atapi device can not be found" It's the BH14NS40_N1.00-A4_patched flasher.

What's my next step? I want to do things proper. Thanks

If a flasher can't find it you have a problem check the power and data connections if fine then the drive is likely dead

[borgman81]

Any help appreciated. Like a total boob I flashed ns50 fw to my 2014 wh16ns40.

[Billycar11]

Any help appreciated. Like a total boob I flashed ns50 fw to my 2014 wh16ns40.

Look at UHD guide it has everything you need.

[nekno]

I also didn't dig into the forum posts enough to realize there was a difference between service code NS40 and NS50 drives, and found myself in this same situation.

Since I'd used the older DosFlash method to flash to the NS50 FW, I had first created a backup of my original NS40 FW.

So, for anyone else in this situation, flashing back to my NS40 backup worked as expected and I'm back to normal.

So, you don't necessarily need to flash with someone else's FW image if you followed the original instructions and have your own backup.

[mike admin]

There is actually a method to re-flash back to NS40 from NS50 without dos-flash, the option will be added to sdftool shortly.

[Billycar11]

There is actually a method to re-flash back to NS40 from NS50 without dos-flash, the option will be added to sdftool shortly.

Option to save bu40ns flashed to desktop drives too?
I recover bricked ones of those all the time

[mike admin]

Option to save bu40ns flashed to desktop drives too?

Depends. It is possible to put back original FW using self-update method, as long as all conditions below are true:
1. Flashed wrong firmware
2. Drive is recognized and visible as "new" but does not work (can't read discs, drive tray does not work, etc)
3. Flashing original firmware gives no error, but firmware does not gets flashed.

If this is the case, then yes - there is a way back.

[nekno]

I still don't know how I was able to save my drive after all my dumb decisions.

I had saved links to the DosFlash instructions that predated the newer, safer methods shared here by Mike, and generously supported by him and others with the newer tools and DE firmware images that make everything safer by using self-updating mode.

If you just start searching the web it's easy to go down the DosFlash route and get yourself jammed up.