yeah i have this really bad habit of buying something because its a deal that seems to good to be true and then it turns out it really is haha 
six months to get a refund, at that stage i would of been sending them anthrax letters... 

your 100% right in what you say, i decided against doing the windows bios update and risking screwing the one board thats booting os. there is however light at the end of the tunnel. im going to try tomorrow shorting out the main bios to trick the back up bios into thinking the main bios has been corrupted. what could of happened is something freakishly small went wrong in the bios update and the back up bios thinks the main bios is working ok and its not kicking in.

i found this telling how to do it if anyone runs into this same problem, it supposedly is a very common problem with these boards. but should only be tried after all other avenues have been exhausted

http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/33904-how-fix-dead-dual-bios-motherboard-if-flashing-failed-2.html