Checksum error when updating firmware of Adaptec RAID Controller on Dell PowerEdge 700

The system is a Dell PowerEdge 700 server, running Microsoft SBS 2003.

The hardware I'm dealing with is an Adaptec CERC SATA1.5/6ch RAID controller (factory installed by Dell).

In preparation for reformatting and loading Windows 2003 Server Standard (and adding 2 more drives- I'm making this into a file server), I wanted to get all of my firmware up to date. This seemed especially important because the Dell OpenManage software was showing an alert:

"The current firmware version 4.1-0 (Bld 7401) is older than the required firmware version 4.1-0 (Bld 7419) for a controller of model 0x0017: Controller 0 (CERC SATA 1.5/6ch)"

So naturally I went to the Dell website and found the appropriate file to download, which was listed as: Adaptec CERC SATA1.5/6ch, Firmware, Multi Language, Multi System, v.4.1.0.7419, A17.

This is one of those deals where the program you download creates a pair of floppy disks. So I found two floppy disks, and created the set without problems.

After a restart, it boots to the first floppy disk. Following the instructions, I start the program from the disk called "AFU" which stands for Adaptec Flash Utility. Continuing with the instructions, I instruct the program to Update the flash image from the A: drive. A box pops up saying "Reading flash image file 7419", and then a moment later, it asks for disk two. I insert disk two, and once again it says "Reading flash image file 7419". But then, instead of moving on to the step where it actually updates the firmware, I get a red error box saying "Checksum Error: Expected checksum 32B5, data checksums to 0000." followed by "Unable to update flash image. The overall checksum does not match that specified in the file header."

After this happened, i have tried numerous things: different sets of floppy disks, formatting the floppy disks first, redownloading the program that creates the disks, using a different floppy drive, and even using the previous version (still build 7419, but the A16 release instead of the A17 release), but none of them worked. Most of the time I get an identical message, though once the data checksum was something besides 0000. Sometimes I would just get a more vague error message "it could not update the flash" and one time, I got a different message saying the file size was wrong.

In short, every time I tried, it failed.

Does anyone have any ideas? I searched EE and Google and couldn't find anything specific to this issue. I also searched Dell and Adaptec with no results. Giving max points.