Sometimes, when the N900 is hosed completely, a simple one step flash will not do, and your device will stay bricked.

It has happened to me already.

How to flash it, when it's bricked so that it will not get unbricked in the simple one-step flash:

http://sumoudou.org/0/6.html

Do you mind if this information is placed in the wiki here? (full credits of course).

Thanks for this. May come in handy when I work through your repartitioning guide

Sure - meaning don't mind, of course :O)

If you mess up, you'll need it, trust me

I've reflashed the phone about 40 times these past couple of days...

Okay sorry to hijack this thread since my N900 is not completely bricked.

I need urgent help. My device has had all sorts of issues and I need to reflash it to see if they go away. However, I am travelling back to UK on Wednesday. So I only have a couple of days to try it out and see if it works otherwise have to return it before I fly out Wednesday.

I have tried to follow the instrunctions in the link below and installed the flasher.

https://wiki.maemo.org/Updating_the_firmware

I am running windows 7. I start my device with u pressed down and go into flash mode (the USB icon shows in the top right of the screen). I then start the flasher programme and enter the command:
flasher-3.5.exe -F RX-51_2009SE_1.2009.42-11_PR_COMBINED_MR0_ARM.bin -f -R

I press enter but then I get the message "suitable USB device not found, waiting."

I disconnect and reconnect but still nothing. What am I doing wrong? Please help.

Read my guide...

Simply, first start the flasher, it'll say device not found, turn the phone completely off, don't turn it on, and only after you've started the flasher, connect the USB cable with the phone, don't turn it on, don't press nothin'...

It'll flash...

The tutorial seems to be for those using Linux

We need one for Windows.

yes please, one for windows would be awesome

Can't you just use any linux distro's live cd and perhaps a thumbdrive?