thanks for the suggestion, but i couldnt get it to work

i got the flasher to the point where it was waiting, then i tried connecting the n900. but the computer doesnt even acknowledge that anything was even plugged in. this happens on 2 different computers. even though the n900 shows the usb icon in the upper right.

also, i cannot "turn it off". as soon as i put the battery in, the phone boots up right away and continues the endless reboot loop forever until i remove the battery. the device completely ignores the power button. the first boot has no backlight, then all the rest do. the dots that usually appear for a moment when you put in the battery never show up.

if i plug the phone into the computer, it will show the usb icon for just a moment the icon goes away, and the phone reboots. if i hold down 'u' then the icon stays and the phone doesnt reboot, but nothing ever happens. the flasher just says waiting and the phone is not acknowledged.

there have been a couple random times where the phone was acknowledged by the computer and it said "device not recognized". but i couldnt get anything more from it and the flasher still waited. i found a thread where someone suggested installing the cable drivers, but that didn't do anything. i also installed ovi suite in case that had any kind of phone drivers in it, but that didnt change anything. ovi suite also doesn't recognize my phone.

even if i cant get this to flash, does anyone know how i can at least access my files? at this point i cant get the phone's hard drive to show up on my computer. if i could at least get my files, i could send my phone in to nokia for the rest.