Followed the Update procedure via Settings => Firmware Update instead of doing an Emergency Bootloader flash via the pin + power-on procedure. The difference is that this one does not clean up all settings and customized APP's added. Runs just fine afterwards with all my changes kept in place.
Futeko. Can you update the intial thread to suggest this as the primary option, and re pin method as the recovery option. It is a pain to re-enter all settings...keyboard, ip, dns, samba, nfs, etc! Wish i had known this before.