Cannot Reinstall Windows 7

So, let me start by saying that Dell has made this forum stupidly hard to find and log in to.  The process is ridiculous.

I am working on an Inspiron 3250.  I am trying to reinstall Windows 7, and it will not complete the install.  Windows setup reboots and goes to the final step, where it says "completing installation" and freezes at that point.  One time, I let it sit for 8 hours and it did nothing.

I have run every diagnostic I can find, and everything checks out okay.

Now, I am going to take a big step back to when the problem started.

The system belongs to my mother-in-law, and she reported a problem and I went over to look at it.  There was nothing wrong, but I noticed and updated BIOS (Inspiron_3650_3250_Vostro_3650_3653_3250_3.3.10.exe) and decided to install it.  During the install, everything seemed to go fine, but when it rebooted after the update, Windows would not finish booting.  It would not boot in safe mode either.

After doing diagnostics and not finding anything, I decided to try reinstalling Windows.  And, that failed as above.

At one point, I noticed that the bios is still on version 3.3.6, but the updated file that I downloaded seems to be 3 3.3.10.  This seems to suggest that the bios update failed, and I am afraid that something went wrong during the upgrade.  I have tried resetting the bios defaults, but that made no difference.

I work in Tech Support, so I can handle complex instructions, if they are worded clearly. 

So, in addition to asking for any general suggestions, I have one question.

Is there a way to update the bios without being able to boot the OS?

Also, is there a link to email support that does not require that you run a diagnostic?  Obviously, I am not using the system I am writing about, because I cannot boot Windows, and so cannot run a diagnostic from the website onto the machine.

Thank you for any help given.