Liteon 24x 5S54 Bios flash is failing... what should I do?

[Muse]

Have the Liteon 24x CDRW drive and downloaded the latest firmware, 5S54, and am attempting to flash, but it seems to be failing. It's sitting there for over 15 minutes now. There was a warning that it was only for drives with a certain series of firmware already installed and I'm not sure mine was among them. I last flashed in November, so I figured I was OK. I have 5S0D installed now. Running Win2k Pro SP2, and all apps closed ... except Netscape so I can post this, now.

My screen looks like this:

__________________________________________________________
LiteON-IT Flash v 1.043LTR-24102B
__________________________________________________________

LiteON-IT drive you want to update:

0-0-0 I:Lite-ON LTR-24102b 5S0D


FLASH

My system is basically pretty hung. I am able to use Netscape to post this, but the 5s54.exe bios flash utility is just running and running and I can't even switch to it now. I can't see it, but task manager shows it as a running process. I'm afraid that if I reboot the machine, the driver will be belly up. Is there a way to fix the BIOS? Can I send the drive (3 months old) to Liteon? Thanks.

 

[chiggachu]

word of advice:

DON'T FLASH

lite-on flashes are sketchy, take it from me. my drive failed after a flash...and i don't think the flashes really do anything anyway, so why risk it?

 

[HappyPuppy]

I flashed both my LiteOn burner and DVD drive last week and it went smoothe as silk. Did you have anything else running when you began the flash?

 

[Muse]

<< I flashed both my LiteOn burner and DVD drive last week and it went smoothe as silk. Did you have anything else running when you began the flash? >>

Nothing else was running. I'd flashed it before, I think twice, no problem. Today, it failed and I thought the drive was probably dead. Win2k practically died and I was barely able to get a reboot without hitting the reset button. I couldn't get the 5S54.exe flash utility to complete. No lights on the drive and it wouldn't put the tray out. When Windows started back up, the drive still worked with the old BIOS, 5S0D. I tried to flash again, same thing happened. I'm not trying again. I did it because at the Liteon website it said that the latest BIOS decreased the chances of creating coasters, and I have them all over the house. It also said "Just do it!". I figured that was a vote of confidence, not the typical "... don't do it unless you are having a problem with your current BIOS...."

 

[bacillus]

hmm, did you turn off DMA for the drive & remove any disk in the drive before you flashed?

 

[Kinki]

can u restore it back to the old firmware? or is the drive dead dead because it didn't finish flashing to the new one?

u can try and pull it out of your system and put it into another one and try flashing there.

 

[Muse]

<< hmm, did you turn off DMA for the drive & remove any disk in the drive before you flashed? >>

No disk, but I did not turn off DMA. Is that necessary?

 

[Muse]

<< can u restore it back to the old firmware? or is the drive dead dead because it didn't finish flashing to the new one?

u can try and pull it out of your system and put it into another one and try flashing there. >>

It still has the old firmware, apparently. Not tested it extensively, but I assume that nothing was written to the BIOS, nothing changed. It seemed to be early on in the flash process that it got hung up. When I went to run the flash utility again, it reported that it had the old firmware, 5S0D. Maybe if I turn off DMA it will succeed, but I'm not sure I should try now. If it were necessary to turn off DMA or even take out a disk they should have said so in a readme. This thing came with no readme. The DL'd file is R245S54.zip and it contains only 5S54.exe. When you run it the warning is as posted at the top of this thread. You are cautioned that it will only work with this one Liteon drive and only if the firmware is 5S01-5S9Z. Whether or not 5S0D fits in there is not apparent to ME! Since I got that in mid October, I figured it was OK. It seemed inconceivable that it wasn't the right firmware. Probably turning off DMA is all that is needed to get it to work. It's amazing to me how many company's firmware update systems seem flaky.