After I executed the command line as shown in the first screenshot, system ran several lines at once (all of them within a second) and stopped at the list line which can be seen in the 2nd screenshot.

However, it has been more than 15mins now but the phone hasn't restarted.

I can still see the NOKIA name in the middle and USB icon on the top right hand corner of the screen on my N900

no.. that's bad.. it's not finished running..

This could be a windows problem.. I'd unplug and turn off your phone (pull the battery out for 2 minutes too) and restart your PC and try again

No, as you can see in my screen shots, it doesn't shows that about flasher completing succesfully... (pls see second screenshot in my previous msg)

before I try again, after unplugging the device.... shall I restart my fone to check if its still working with the current settings as it was previously?

You could.. but it's possible it will be in an inconsistent state.. I think you've rather committed yourself to flashing, now..

ok but what if this windows XP SP3 gives the same problem again?

Windows XP seems to work better.. but the alternative is to boot Linux from a USB stick.. this avoids using windows at all.. I've pretty much only ever heard of flashing problems on windows..

Macs and Linux generally seem great..

If you have a 2Gig usb stick kicking about, you could try these instructions I put together..

http://discussions.europe.nokia.com/.../693460#M11588

That'll let you flash your phone by booting from the USB stick.. It's seriously easier than trying to fix windows issues, imho

Hmm,... I lost my USB stick at work so only option I have now is do it via laptop that has XP SP3.

Also, when I connected the USB cable by pressing and holding the 'U' key on the phone, on my laptop it recognized the phone device but said the device did not get connected properly and might not work properly.

However, as the instructions on the flasher update said that as long as you see the USB icon on the top right hand corner of your phone it means the phone is in flashing mode so I went ahead with command prompt...

I will restart my PC and give it another try.

Hope it will work ok this time.

Thanks for your advice cpitchford.

I just restarted my laptop now.

Also, i have rebooted my phone as of now it looks fine... I dont know if it will surprise me later lol

using disk checker utility I also checked the free space in rootfs and its only 23.4MB left.

So how do I create more space in rootfs before I retry to upgrade firmware?

I deleted quite a few programs and now I have also deleted Tuxrace, still when I check the rootfs (both using command prompt and DiskCheck utility) it sill shows free space as 22.4MB and used space as 200MB (90%)

Why doesn't it updates the free space as I have deleted quite a few programs and also the game.