I think my LTR-52246S is dead...

[dOdGE.dIZ]

... though I did nothing wrong. I'm ABSOLUTELY sure of that.

I followed the MTKFLASH "How to..." to the letter, checked and double re-checked everything, made a backup of the firmware (6s0a) and then flashed to the latest revision (6s0d). While it was flashing I got a "Flash failed" message at Bank 2 but then it repeated the step and got "Bank 2: OK!". This happened again twice ending with an OK! message always, until the "Reboot the PC" final message.

Rebooted on the reset switch and, at the POST screen, I got stuck while it was "Detecting the IDE drives". Only then I realised the CD-RW had the green light solid on and wouldn't open the tray. Even after disconnecting and reconnecting the power plug things remained the same. As soon as I pressed the power button the green light would turn on. Couldn´t even get into the BIOS.

The PC wouldn't boot at all. Only after I disconnected the drive I was able to enter Windows.

My question is: Is this reversible?

Thanx for the help.

[Inertia]

Unless you have a faulty EEPROM chip in the drive, usually a failed flash on a LiteOn is fixable. This is one of the best features of a LiteOn.

Just reflash the drive again with MTKFLASH, and normally the flash will be fixable and work properly.

[dOdGE.dIZ]

Unless I disconnected the drive I couldn't get past the POST screen and the "Detecting the IDE drives" message, which detected NOTHING. Not both the HDDs on Primary nor the HD-165H (master) and much less the LTR-52246S (slave) on Secondary. It just kept "detecting"...

Thus I can't access the drive "normally" during booting to try and re-flash it.

Hence my dilemna.

Thank you for the reply anyway.

[dhc014]

This seems to be happening more, and more often

[Inertia]

Try disabling the IDE connection to the LiteOn in the system BIOS to see if it will then boot with the drive connected but unrecognized. If this allows a normal system boot, then you can try reflashing. Even if the IDE connection is disabled in the BIOS, the MTKFLASH may still allow the flash to be made since the particular IDE connection is specified in the command line. If this allows the flash to be made, then after rebooting go into the BIOS again and reset the drive IDE connection to be recognized.

If the above doesn't work, boot with the power connected but the IDE cable disconnected to the burner. Once the boot is completed and you are at the A: drive prompt, reconnect the IDE cable to the LiteOn (carefully). Then apply the flash. This is a little riskier, but may work around the drive detection problem that you are now experiencing.

[cfitz]

I was going to suggest the same things, Inertia. I was also going to suggest disconnecting the drive, booting into the BIOS and rather than disabling the BIOS settings, setting all of them manually (and using PIO as the manually set transfer mode) then powering down, reconnecting and rebooting.

Also, rather than disconnecting the IDE cable, booting and then reconnecting it after the A:> prompt was established, I was going to suggest disconnecting and connecting the power cable from the drive to get the same effect.

Finally, I was going to suggest, for extra safety, leaving all the other IDE drives disconnected while playing around with these attempts to reflash the dead drive.

One of these various flavors suggest by Inertia or me might help.

cfitz

[dOdGE.dIZ]

cftiz sugestions aren't bad, specially the "leaving all the other IDE drives disconnected for extra safety" one, as I've had enough grief for one day.

Actually I thought of "hot plugging" the power connector during the booting but decided against it for being too risky. I definitely wouldn't try this with the IDE cable as my A7N8X-DLX is WAY more important (and expensive) than a CD-RW drive.

I'll try then in the morning, with a cool head. If all else fails I'll RMA the damn thing.

Again, thank you very much for all the replies.

[cfitz]

I definitely wouldn't try this with the IDE cable

I'm not actually sure which would be the safer approach. For example, you wouldn't want to hook up just the +5 and +/-12 leads without the ground and end up with the full drive motor current trying to return through IDE signal grounds. But, on the other hand, the drive's case is probably already grounded to the chassis so this particular concern would be abated, and there is less chance, in my opinion, of making a slip when hooking up the power than when hooking up the IDE cable. It's a bit of a tossup without knowing more details about how the drive is constructed.

Anyway, the first thing I would try would be to disconnect the drive, change all relevant auto-detect settings in the BIOS to the appropriate manually set values, shut down and reconnect the drive, and reboot. If that allows the system to boot to DOS and give you another try at mtkflash, then hopefully you are home free.

If it doesn't work I would probably try Inertia's trick of disabling the drive in BIOS next, and then if that also didn't work I would move on to the more drastic steps.

cfitz

[Inertia]

dOdGE.dIZ,

In my opinion, unplugging and reconnecting the IDE cable is no more (and maybe less) risky than doing the same with the power cable. In my experience, I feel more comfortable hot reconnecting a data path rather than a power source due to the possibility of a power spike or surge gumming up the works. As cfitz has alluded, this is not an exact science. In any event, do what you feel comfortable with as you are the one who has to pay the freight.

If memory serves, this same type of problem you are experiencing is related to the operation of the motherboard, which is not allowing a boot if the drive isn't functional. I think others have solved the problem by removing the drive and installing in a computer with a different motherboard (can't remember the exact ones that work, but the ones that don't are probably uncommon). If another computer will allow the boot, then you can reflash in that computer, fix the drive and finally reinstall it in your computer.

Another option is found at MtkWinFlash can recover dead drives now!!!. This software allows dead drives to be flashed and recovered in Windows.

Another possibility is that your BIOS may be set to boot first from CD-ROM. If so, then the failure of the drive to be recognized may abort the whole boot process. In this case, changing the BIOS to boot from the A: drive could be an elegant solution (if it works).

Last, but not least (quite the contrary), there is a whole thread at CD Freaks devoted to information about bad flash recoveries at Bad-flash-recovered LiteOns. Some of the reports are almost identical to yours, so I am fairly certain you will find a solution there

[CDRecorder]

I think it would be safer to just tell the BIOS that the drive doesn't exist and then try MTKFLASH or MTKWinFlash. That way, you don't have any danger of damaging something while hot-swapping. Then, when you're done flashing, reboot and enable the drive through the BIOS.

[dOdGE.dIZ]

Thank you all for the help.

Like I said, a good night sleep works wonders. First thing in the morning, I hooked up the burner again, AFTER setting "Secondary Slave" to "None" in the BIOS, reset and it booted normally. No LTR-52246S in Windows but that was expected.

Rebooted, ran MTKFLASH with the following command "MTKFLASH 4 r /b CHECK.BIN", to try and figure out what happened during the botched flash atempt and it returned a "0000" error message. This, I gather, meant the EEPROM is blank.

Tried to re-flash with the original binary I backed-up. Again the same 3 memory banks errors. Rebooted, no go. Tried the latest "6s0d" f/w once more, this time I got an error as soon as hit "Enter", saying something like "Unable open the [binary] file" or something like that. This was a first.

Entered Windows (Xp Pro) tried MtkWinFlash, and it hanged, everytime, which is the reason I rather flash things in DOS.

Well, I gave up since I couldn't waste any more time. Returned the drive to the retailer, explained what was going on and now I´m waiting for the new (or recovered, though doubt it) one.

Maybe Inertia hit the nail spot-on in the first reply: faulty EEPROM? If it has 8 memory banks and consistently writes only on 5, perhaps the problem lied within the drive, not with the flash procedure.

Well, there will always be the proverbial rotten apple.


That's that.

Thank you all, and thank you for the link "Bad-flash-recovered LiteOns"-link Inertia, it half-helped. It assured me I did every possible thing right, and kept getting the same error.

Take care.

[CDRecorder]

I hope your new drive works better!