IMac EFI update problems

My Mid 2011 iMac 27" i7 will no longer start after the latest EFI update.
I decided to perform some system updated on my iMac and after installing 10.7.3, I rechecked and it found the EFI update and one other update. They were both pretty small (the largest was 3.6MB), so I decided to proceed prior to getting back to business with my system.
After downloading the updates (took about 5 seconds), the machine proceeded to restart. There was a loud beep prior to the system restart chime after which it went to the grey-white apple startup screen with the spinning wheel.
And it stayed there.
After 35 minutes with no discernable progress, I decided something must be wrong. This system normally takes about 30 seconds to boot from a cold state (it's running on an OWC SSD) or maybe a minute after updates. So I held the power button to reboot. But it keeps going to the same state. I tried to reboot to a different internal drive holding the option key, but the same thing happens.
System Specs:
iMac 27" i7 3.4 Ghz (mid 2011) 12G Ram
Internal 1TB Apple HD
Internal OWC SSD 240G (main startup drive)
Here are my questions:
1. How do I recover from this?
2. Is anyone else running into this problem?
3. How long do the EFI updates normally take?
4. Shouldn't there be some sort of "progress bar" to indicate something is going on during this process? Or, if not, then perhaps a "WARNING!! This process will take up to two hours, during which you will receive no discernable feedback. Do not interrupt the process until more than 24 hours have passed with the spinning ball."
Thanks for your help.
Jason Cox
P.S. I think this is my last iMac EFI update. After my last iMac received an EFI update (2009 model 24" iMac), it became ultra-flakey and started corrupting HD's. It never worked the same after that. This machine was working PERFECTLY before the update.

I don't have the link to that thread, but here is how to do it:
To reset the SMC:
Shut down your system.
Unplug all the accessories from the system
Unplug the power cord from the iMac and leave it unplugged for at least 15 seconds.
Reconnect the power cord. Wait another fifteen seconds and restart the computer.
To Reset the PRAM:
On startup, hold down these keys at the same time (must start before the grey screen comes up): command option p r
Hope that helps.

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You'll also see the progress bar install the update, that is what the brief flash was but because the button wasn't held for a few seconds, it didn't take.
Message was edited by: musashi88

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http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1618
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Identifiant du modèle :          iMac9,1
Nom du processeur :          Intel Core 2 Duo
Vitesse du processeur :          2,66 GHz
Nombre de processeurs :          1
Nombre total de cœurs :          2
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WonderWoofy wrote:
I don't think you have either of those kernels... as they don't exist. I assume you meant that you are using 3.10.5 and supposedly have 3.10.6 installed. You issue is a bit of a catch 22, as you are unable to mount the ESP (no vfat module matching your running kernel), yet mounting the ESP would be required in order to properly udpate. I imagine that you actually have the correct kernel as /boot/vmlinuz-linux. But whatever mechanism you use to copy it from that location to the ESP didn't work.
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Performance reduced under Bootcamp after EFI update on Macbook Pro Retina

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Hey Shadowyani, please take a time and fill a bug report at http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/ . The machine is useless for me as it is now because I develop and use very GPU/CPU demanding scientific applications, after the update my realtime applications are completely useless as they drop from something like 25fps to 9 fps even on Mac OS X (no SMC reset fixed the issue). In bootcamp the situation is worse, my software runs at 4 fps and gaming turns to be impossible to play as well.
Please let Apple know about the problem, fill a bug report, even if SMC reset once in a while fixed the issue for you (this is not a common behaviour and must be fixed). We paid the price for cutting edge technology.
Apple shall not do a downgrade of the system after few weeks, remember that most of reviews and benchmarks were done BEFORE the EFI Update, so people are being fooled by Apple in this sense.

IMac EFI update problems

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