Yeah iirc you could use a command line option to prohibit the steam update (step 3 in your process), but this feels very familiar.
For reference I looked up the tool I mentioned
The official(ish) tool for restoring the firmware is, best I can tell, something a single employee put together in their spare time and tossed over the wall. The zip includes unrelated files and required DLLs aren't packaged. I recommend reading the entire thread before trying anything, though I tried to summarize correct instructions in post #99 of that thread.