Did you select the ORIGINAL option and pressed Make firmware? Yes I selected the original option.

Did you put the unit into pre-boot mode, executed updater.exe from GarminCure3 by pressing updater.exe
button, and used updater.exe for flashing? Yes I found that I had no choice but to put it in pre-boot mode because updater wouldn't connect to it until I did.

After it completed, the unit rebooted and gave a progress bar along the bottom and then the Garmin logo with the icon of the GPS and PC popped up. That is when I started installing the updates and transferring my routes back over but not before verifying that it created the file garmindevice.xml. I'm still skeptical until this thing completes and I find that I can actually power it up and go to the main menu. That is when I will be celebrating. As of now it is a third of the way completed.