Dusty I clicked Flash release - It went to it's first "Restarting device..." and hung
OK, but did you see the "Reconnect device" button that should appear when the installer "hangs" on "Restarting deviceā¦"? If so, did you press it?
Dusty The Unlock bootloader button is not grayed out, so I clicked it.
I'm not sure why you are clicking "Unlock bootloader" when the bootloader is already unlocked. If you're doing that during the flashing, I imagine the flashing gets interrupted.
Dusty I am currently sitting on the "fastbootd" screen with the "Reboot system now" highlighted. Last time I was here, after sitting on that screen for quite a while, I selected the Reboot option.
The device shouldn't be touched during the flashing, or it will interrupt.
If you're not seeing the "Reconnect device" button as I've described, then that is the culprit, and if so then something is really weird here.
Dusty Should I consider abandoning the install from the Tablet? I went down this road because I thought this would be the simpler option and getting the Google USB driver loaded on my laptop seems to be a bit of a struggle.
Personally, I would find it interesting if you continued to attempt flashing from the Tablet, as I'm very interested in what is causing this. But from your perspective, I'm assuming you just want the flashing done ASAP. I assume that by "Google USB driver" you are referring to obtaining the bootloader interface driver on Windows. In 99% of cases you can easily obtain that driver from Windows Updates. Simply do the following steps:
While the device is booted into the bootloader interface: open Windows Updates, do a manual check for updates, wait for the update check to finish. Then go to Optional updates, select the update that contains "Android" within its name (might start with "Lemobile"), install it and retry the "Flash release" step of the installer.
On Windows 11, the procedure to access "Optional updates" is to first select "Advanced options" within Windows Updates.