I killed my old CD-Burner by trying to flash it. Then I managed to kill my third hard drive (which was a backup drive I was at that time working from) when I tried to force the Flash to the CD-Burner to try to fix it.
Needless to say I won't be forgetting that incident and now avoid all firmware flashes if at all possible.
Basically, it sounds to me that more was done than simply changing the region.