:bounce3:... glad to hear it. There was probably a firewall and/or Internet security software getting in the way. The other possiblity when you tried it with Windows running normally is that there was a Windows permissions issue with some of the background activities done by the firmware updater (especially if it is Windows Vista). Using Safe Mode is IMO the fastest/easiest way to work around either barrier.
In your original post, you said that the firmware updater was able to put the Apex in bootloader mode - which means that it was able to communicate to some extent, so I just assumed that you'd already figured out that you needed to assign a static IP address to the notebook's Ethernet interface.