he managed to type in the "flasher-3.5 -F vemmc.bin -f -R" line so I figured he was almost there! The fault wasn't flasher talking to the device, it's not a windows problem as far as I can tell

Here is a thread that really does walk through step by step.. From this morning, I might add!

http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/...unread-message

Seriously.. follow that thread very very closely and I imagine you should be fine!