I followed the above sticky and it works great. However it still gets caught in a reset loop regardless of what firmware version I put on it. This is completely unacceptable. I'm going to exchange it for a S3. I won't even go into my banks not being motivated of making an app for WP8 anytime soon, but that isn't Nokia's fault though Microsoft wasn't smart on releasing the SDK so late. The phone reset did seem to work fine when I first got the phone on release but whatever firmware update they did screwed things up.

It is completely bs that a customer should have to download various tools just to get their phone working again. I've had no problems doing system resets on my previous iPhones, Droids, etc.

Whoever found those tools a big thanks.