OK! Got the idea from reading a different thread about a fellow n800er having flashing problems to reflash os07! and it works! Got a machine again. I first tried os08 beta but that jumped off at the same point.

Now I have an amd64 laptop running xp with 1.5 g ram and am not running any other programs on it other than the browser so it is not likely to be an issue from the lappy.

Ideas?