evo e3HD wont flash?

Hi there

not sure if this is the right forum to post this but i thought Id try.. Im after some technical help on a E3HD Ive been given to look at by my father in law..

This E3HD is currently running OpenATV 3.0 but is failing to boot properly. Im therefore trying to reimage with a USB the e3HD factory image, and for some reason the receiver refuses to flash the files on the USB..

I've formatted the USB to FAT32
Copied the factory files from the download link

http://www.e3hd.net/download.htm

to the memory stick within the e3hd folder.
Renamed the noforce file to force
Reboot with memory stick in USB port
and alas the receiver reboots, checks the usb stick and then [fails] to boot the current ATV.

Ive tried
- 4 different memory sitcks
- putting the files in the root directory of the memory stick
- uppercase E3HD and lowercase e3hd
- tried setting force file to noforce and holding the power button when rebooting
- tried the openatv image from

http://images.mynonpublic.com/openatv/nightly/index.php?open=evoe3hd

Interestingly although current image doesnt boot properly I am able to telnet in using root/evo, and from here I can navigate to /mnt/hdd and I can see the files on my memory stick

Alas nothing works...

Help!

thanks in advance