Order of flashing bootloader and device os?

just as you start you can make sense of it all…

i do a lot of testing on the same device as i do not have an unlimited supply of virgin p1 devices

so i thought i had it all figured out but:

particle usb dfu

does not work with the device os on my virgin p1 (0.5.3)

it gives this error:

Unable to open USB device: LIBUSB_ERROR_NOT_SUPPORTED

i can do (p1 is on com4):

mode com4: baud=14400

(it does give a “not supported” error but does work)

after upgrading device os (to 1.5.2) the “particle usb dfu” does work

problem: now i have to figure out the com port…

please can anyone in the know tell us what the correct way to “factory flash” is? something that does work for all p1’s we might get