Detailed installation instructions for H96Pro Plus custom ROM (with most steps applicable to any S912 ROM.)

[TheBloke]

The following guide is for installation of superceleron 's H96 ProPlus SCV3 firmware.

The basic steps 1 -5 should apply to any firmware, except that other firmware probably requires erase_bootloader ticked in Step 4 item 8 (where it must be unticked for SCV2.)

I am not sure exactly when erase_bootloader is or is not required, however I know it must not be ticked for SCV2 (as below), but that I always had it ticked when flashing Stock and other custom FW. So be aware of this difference, and if using these instructions for FW other than superceleron's SCV2/SCV3, be sure to also check the instructions for the FW you're applying.

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NOTE: The following guide was written in May 2017, when the latest version of superceleron's ROM was SCV3. The latest version at the time of writing is SCV7. I have updated the below guide to reflect the changed version numbers, but I have not re-run the procedure myself, nor have I tested any ROM later than SCV3. The guide below should still works, as it is a generic method. But I don't have personal experience of later ROMs and any new instructions required. Please refer to superceleron's thread for further help.

The guide should continue to work as later versions appear - just check superceleron's thread to see which file is the IMG, and which is the OTA. You apply the latest IMG first (Steps 1, 2, 3, 4) then you boot into the OS and apply the latest OTA (Step 5).
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ATV ROM: The following guide should also work for ATV ROMs. But I have never tested that personally.

The thread for the ATV ROM is here. The current initial IMG is SCV1 (for Steps 1-4 below), and the current OTA update is SCV4A (Step 5 below).

Please read the ATV ROM thread for further details.
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Step 1 : Required hardware:

1. A Windows PC (or working Bootcamp install on a Mac)
2. A Micro-SD card of at least 4GB in size - one that you are willing to format
3. Some way to use this Micro-SD card in the Windows PC - such as a built in Micro-SD card reader, or else a Micro-SD to USB adapter (like this cheap one on Amazon.)
4. A paper clip or extremely small/thin screwdriver, suitable for pressing in the reset switch on the side of the H96 Pro+.

Step 2 : Required software:

1. Amlogic Burn CardMaker 2.0.2
2. WinRar or 7Zip or some other software that can open RAR archives
3. The SCV4 Blue or Green ROM from the first post of this thread
4. The SCV7A update ROM from the first post of this thread

Step 3 : SCV4 Rom Preparation:

1. Make sure you download the right ROM for your device - either Blue ROM or Green ROM depending which PCB you have (refer to ROM thread for help.)
2. Extract the SCV4 ROM zip you downloaded.
3. It contains a single file, eg named: SCV4-A7.1.2-x64-Alfawise.H96.ProPlus.img
4. It is important that the filename contains no special characters other than dash, dot and underscore. The file you get from the ZIP should match this pattern. If for any reason it doesn't, rename it to remove any characters other than dot, dash and underscore.

Step 4 : Burning the SCV4 ROM to MicroSD card with Burn Card Maker

1. Download and install WinRar or 7Zip so that you are able to open RAR files - 7Zip is free without nag screens, so this is probably the best choice
2. Open the Burn CardMaker RAR file, and extract its contents to a new folder
3. Insert your 4+ GB micro-SD card into your micro-SD card reader on the PC and confirm that it is now visible in Windows Explorer; take a note of its new drive letter (maybe D: or E: or F: etc - depends on the other drives you have.)
4. Run Burn_Card_Maker.exe from the newly extracted folder
5. You do speak Chinese, right??
6. If not, you need to:
   1. Click on the menu in the top left of the window - it's the only menu option
      1. 
   2. Select the second option down
      1. 
   3. Now it will be obvious: a dialog appears in which you can click "English Version" then OK
   4. Now close the program and re-open it.
7. Great, now it's in English.
8. Set up Burn Card Maker options as follows:
   1. Choose your Micro-SD card under "Choose disk:" - making sure the dropdown is set to the right drive letter for your micro-sd
   2. All boxes should be ticked except "erase_bootloader" : in terms of changes, this will mean ticking "To Partition and Format" and unticking "erase_bootloader"
   3. Choose the SCV4 ROM you downloaded, by clicking Open and then browsingthe IMG file you extracted in Step 1.
   4. It should look like this:
      1. 
9. Now click the Make button
10. Click OK on the dialog that says "Partition has been finished .. start to format the disk!"
11. You now get a "Format USB drive" dialog. Before proceeding, confirm that the "Capacity" matches your expected SD Card size - eg it's around 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, whatever size you chose. Just be sure it's not saying 1TB or something - in which case you chose the wrong drive and must cancel immediately!
    1. Assuming all is well, click Start.
    2. Then click OK on the "WARNING: Formatting will erase ALL data.." dialog.
    3. Then click OK on "Format Complete" dialog
    4. Now you're back to the "Format USB drive" window, where you can click Close.
12. Now Burn Card Maker will copy the ROM to your SD Card, and show its progress with this window:
    1. 
13. Once finished, you will get a "Success" dialog, on which you click OK
14. Now you can close Burn Card Maker.
15. Finally, make sure you properly Eject your SD-Card in Windows Explorer -
    1. Browse in Explorer to This PC
    2. Find your SD card drive
    3. Right-click and choose Eject

Step 5 : Applying SCV4 ROM to your H96 Pro Plus

1. Remove the power cable from your H96 Pro Plus (but not the HDMI cable, which should be connected to a switched-on TV or monitor.)
2. Insert the Micro SD card you just burned into the H96's Micro SD card slot
3. Hold down the reset switch with your paper clip or screwdriver, and while the reset switch is held down, put the power cable back in.
4. Keep that reset switch held down until the screen comes on, and you see the word "Upgrading"
   1. You can then stop holding down the reset switch.
5. You will see a long progress bar which will slowly move up as the ROM is applied.
6. Once it is completed, the device will automatically reboot.
7. You should immediately notice a new splash screen and then a new startup animation.
8. Expect the first boot to take a while - several minutes maybe - until you eventually get to a basic setup wizard
9. Complete the setup wizard
10. You will now get to the basic LightFlow launcher that is included in the ROM.
11. You have now successfully flashed your H96 to the older version of this ROM.

Step 6 : Upgrading to the latest SCV7A ROM

1. Remove the Micro SD card from the H96 Pro Plus and put it back in your PC.
2. Format it the SD using Windows Explorer: find the drive under This PC; right click on it to get the menu; choose Format; click Start to format it with default options; then Close the Format dialog.
3. Copy the SCV7A ROM zip file to the newly formatted SD card - literally copy the ZIP, do not extract it.
4. Eject the SD card from the Windows PC in the same way we did in Step 4, and put it back into the H96 Pro Plus.
5. On the H96, go to Apps and find and open UPDATE
6. Tick the box that says "Wipe Data"
7. Then click Local Update
8. It should automatically find the H96Pro-BETA...OTA.zip file on your SD Card, and will show its name at the top of the next screen; click/select this name with your remote/keyboard/mouse (you can just hit OK on a remote or Enter on a keyboard, or left click with a mouse.)
9. It should now reboot into TWRP Recovery and automatically apply the update file.
10. It's possible there might be a further confirmation/OK screen after this point - I can't remember and can't test without wiping my H96 again, which I don't want to do. But it should be obvious how to proceed.
11. After reboot you will need to complete the basic setup wizard again
12. Finally you will see LightFlow, and are now on the latest SCV3.

A YouTube video that shows burning a stock ROM, covering many (but not all) of my steps above:

If you want some further help and reassurance, watch this 7 minute YouTube video.

This is a general demonstration of flashing a stock ROM to the H96 Pro+. It shows the majority of my Steps 4 and 5 above. This is not my video, but I did watch it before I did my first flash and found it to be a useful reassurance of how to perform the basic steps.

Vital note: In this video you will see that in Burn Card Maker they tick all the boxes. That's required for a Stock ROM flash, but SCV2 requires that "erase_bootloader" is not ticked. So if you watch this video, be sure to be aware of this difference and be sure to follow my steps above exactly. The video is just for a visual reference to the general steps involved - always check you're doing everything I listed above.

Let me know if anything doesn't work right or if you need further help.

[scooter2014]

Great post Thanks.

[Dadscab]

I think there's every chance that the issues you have are firmware related. Certainly the Play Store one - I had lots of Play Store issues using the stock Android 6.0.1 firmware that my H96 Pro Plus came with. Chief amongst them was it only working briefly after a fresh boot, and then it would give a white screen until I either rebooted, or cleared out its cache.

Here's a quick guide:
.

You are absolutely blooming marvelous.
Much appreciated and Many thanks.
Simon.
I'll give it a bash and let you know how I get on

[superceleron]

Very good work

[Dadscab]

Very good work

Your efforts are greatly appreciated sir.
I'm a special kind of idiot and usually bugger things up in a royal fashion, if I manage to get this box working it will be a small miracle lol.

[TheBloke]

Thanks guys and you're welcome, Dadscab. Hope it works out for you. Let me know if you find anything that doesn't match the guide.

[Dadscab]

Thanks guys and you're welcome, Dadscab. Hope it works out for you. Let me know if you find anything that doesn't match the guide.

I'm still reading the Beano, and I managed to do this with your guide. Thanks very much for your help. much appreciated.
Just signed in to Google Play Store, so far so good.
No to install SPMC on the box, and fingers crossed I'll be crash and error free once again.

Thanks again.
Simon aka Dadscab.

[TheBloke]

Great! Have fun.

I've not yet installed SPMC, I've just been testing things out with standard Kodi. I know Kodi 17.3 is solid on the H96 Pro+ with superceleron's ROM - no crashes at all in fact. Although I was getting a tiny bit of choppiness on a 1080P video I was streaming last night. Nothing that made it unwatchable, just occasionally I was aware that it seemed to drop the odd frame on panning shots. No doubt that's where SPMC would be better, as vanilla Kodi doesn't have any configuration at all for video settings on Android, and presumably SPMC supports better HW acceleration and the like.

There's also FTMC, the fork provided by this forum, which we have already pre-installed with superceleron's ROM. I've not yet looked into that either but I'm sure it has its own benefits

[Dadscab]

Something new for me to try FTMC, never heard of it till now ☺️ I'll play it safe for now and go with what I know, as I'm easily confused.
Cheers again to you and superceleron for all the help.
Simon.

[Belyakov]

Can someone please post screenshots of the launcher interface? 

[scooter2014]

Go watch the video in his Thread where you download the firmware.

[Dadscab]

[Dadscab]

This is what mine looks like

[kwabh]

Man thanks to THE BLOKE for sharing the tuto. A great help to many new users and those that might have a bricked device. rgds

[tombraga]

TheBloke very good job, thanks a lot for this tutorial, which i was looking for so much time.

I did not yet any installation of any superceleron rom, i am still on the original android nougat 7.1.1 - when arrived the box i updated from marshmallow 6 to nougat 7 with the sd card burning tool as in the youtube video (tv box stop) which you also showed in your tutorial.

now i want to install the superceleron rom, because my tv box is freezing many times.

can i burn directly the SCV4 img file with the sdcard burning method (instead of the SCV2 you explained in tutorial) and then format my sd card and copy the SCV6 zip-file and make via update app the update to SCV6 instead to SCV3 in your tutorial?

that means, same procedure but instead SCV2 i use SCV4 and instead SCV3 i use SCV6 regarding to your tutorial?

one more observation:

in this tutorial (which is in portugues) Carlos says to uncheck the erase_flash box to keep the data and configurations. He says, normally it´s going ok and you can keep all your datas. If something is going wrong you can make factory reset later, he says.
I would like to make in this way, because i have made a lot of configurations of apps and my nova launcher prime.

On the other side i made backup of the apps with titanium backup pro.

what do you mean, can i try with the erase_flash unchecked (empty)? Or somebody can confirm that it works after done in this way?

and sorry, to recheck everything i started on page 1 and only on page 25 i found a link to your tutorial and it can be, later when i am close to the end maybe my questions here are all responded, i don´t know yet.

would be good, if superceleron could make a link on the first page to your tutorial.

[Dadscab]

Thanks guys and you're welcome, Dadscab. Hope it works out for you. Let me know if you find anything that doesn't match the guide.

Hi again TheBloke.
I hope you and yours are all well mate.
I haven't updated my box since your last tutorial for SCV3. I've just tried to do an OTA update on the box, but I keep getting a message saying "Check Failed! Check Your OTA Server Agent" so the question is, do you have another idiot proof guide to the next update?
Cheers, Simon aka Dadscab.