I got mine to work. I followed the instructions that Scott posted in the other thread / that I got from support, and repeated many times until it worked. A couple of thoughts in case they at all help anyone:

1) The computer on which it eventually worked is brand new. The computer on which I first tried was fairly old, and is only USB 1.1. 'May or may not be related.
2) I noticed that sometimes I got the error after "erase" and sometimes before then - after the "data" (first) stage. Whenever I got it after the data stage, if I looked in the Device Manager I could see that the computer did not have "Outlaw 990" or whatever listed in the USB tree, it had "Composite USB Device" or something like that. So as I was trying over and over again, I started watching the Device Manager in Windows and only tried the upgrade when I saw the Outlaw 990 in the USB tree. If I didn't see that I cycled power, reconnected, re-installed the driver etc./whatever it took to get the computer to recognize it as the Outlaw 990. I think to get the upgrade to work (after an initial failure) you need to get through several of the "erase" sessions in a row. If you only get through "data", the counter restarts and you need to get another three or so "erase" sessions.

'Could all be coincidence, or it could be related.

-Pete