Having bought one of these X96 boxes last year I always wondered if or when there will be an update available. With the thing running on Android 6.0.1 already I was not expecting monthly updates though. Sadly the box always gives an error in regards to stack not being able to access the internet. Turned out, at least for my box there is no real link it tries to access for the update, so it will always fail. It also seems I am one of the lucky guy who already had a quite recent firmware installed - from July 2016.

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Considering their release strategy and time stamping procedure the firmware was created sometime Feb- March 2016. Everything worked fine except that some programs I installed caused crashes at times with no reason I could find.

Plus Kodi would often take forever and a bit more to get through the menus and start things. The most annyoing part howver was that the remote did not provide the stop function. All player buttons olny pause the video or skip it by 15seconds. I decided it is time to search for some updates somewhere. If all works fine you should not!

It is always better to leave a well running system alone. Sometimes Android like to bloat up from all the things we installed. As with Windows everything leaves stuff behind even if uninstalled correctly. Over time things can get slow or after some 'tuning' certain parts not longer respond as the should. With most of these boxes already rooted and open to all sorts of attack people even ruin their Android system by the use of tuning tools designed for smartphones. And there are claims the some people got their box shipped with totally outdated firmware and no online update working. For all this a backup of what you need and a fresh firmware install can solve a lot of problems and give you some speed back too.

Best reason is if you want to sell your box after extensive use and including quite a few personal things on it. Nothing beast a fresh firmware when it comes to removing ALL your user data. You can also try a wipe and factory reset from the recovery console if you don't want to flash a firmware. With the S905 and S906 chipsets the good thing is that basically every box with the same amount of memory and same WiFi chip will be compatible for a firmware donation. Big downside of this way is that you get a box branded for some other manufacturer and that the remote might not work at all.

No big deal if you prefer a WiFi mouse/keyboard kombo anyway. And of course not every firmware comes in a format the X96 can use right away. There are UBS burning tools to get these firmwares onto a box if you really need to though. However, I wanted to get the original back in the hope to get a working remote or to find a way to turn the box on and off through the airmouse.

After some digging on the web I found the guys behind the X96 are actually nice enough to provide more or less regular updates for their boxes, even for the new model with dual WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0. Only problem with these updates is that they come without any instructions and are located on a chinese file hosting and website service - pan.baidu.com. I used the Google translator for several hours without finding any way to register an account at Baidu without the need for a china based landline or mobile number to activate it. There is none, which means as a normal guy you can only download files of up to about 200mb, everything bigger gives you an error message telling you to use their downloader tool - which needs a registered login as well.

But at least the firmware was found:) The actual download problem was solved with some script and browser plugin in conjunction with a download manager. If you need the details on the how to then please check my about this task. All original firmware versions for the X96 boxes can be found on this for download. Found an easier and faster way to get. Program alcormpufd untuk ic alcor au6986 driver. I assume you installed a download manager of your choosing and the browser extension and script. In the Baidu account you see a normal folder structure as you would with any filemanager.