I have an Inspiron 6400/E1505 (BIOS A12) and I just downloaded/installed the BIOS update A17.  Argghhh.  On reboot the Dell screen appeared, with the moving white bar (showed M061 above and A17 below).  However, the moving white bar slowed to an absolute crawl over the final 25% and when it disappeared, instead of the next screen quickly showing "PBR 2 - done" then moving onto the Windows start-up, it just hung with a black screen and a flashing white cursor in the top left corner.

I turned it off, waited 30secs then turned it on and pressed f2 when the first Dell screen appeared.  Same result. Next time I tried f12, which eventually brought up the System startup option screen and by exiting from there, the start-up succeeded.  Obviously this is not a procedure I want to go through at every start-up, so can I reflash the BIOS with A12?  (I have the file MM061A12 on my desktop).

Thanks in advance for your help!