Printer Setup, Software & Drivers

My MFP M281fdw had a firmware update a few days ago. It immediately began cycling through initiation over and over again. After twenty or so times of the same cycle I shut it down.

Today i tried to turn it on again, and it is still doing it. Service Error 79.

Following various fixes here in the forums, I tried powering down, then unplugging it for 5 minutes, then uninstalling the driver. The POS "HP Smart" program was unable to reinstall it, because it kept cycling. I found on these forums to do an original initialization, by holding the lower right corner of the touch screen during printer boot up. This stopped the cycling briefly, but left it unconnected to the Wifi. I tried several times to "HP SMART" install, and reconnect to my wifi, but it kept failing even the password is absolutely correct. I then connected a USB printer cable, and it still could not complete the installation.
It has at various times told me my Wifi network was 5 mhz instead of 2.4 and I should find another, which is nuts because it has run fine over it for over a year. It has sometimes connected to the wireless network by going back to earlier settings, but then it starter Error 79'ing me and cycling and I have to do the special initialization. Sometimes it acts like it sees the printer over the USB cable, but then still can't get far along enough to install the **bleep** drivers again. Most of the time it doesn't notice me plugging in the printer through the USB cable.

It seems like trying to connect the printer to the wifi through the "wizard" on the printer menu can actually wreck my internet connection over my wifi, forcing me to reboot the computer.

Following more advice on the forum, I completely removed the "HP Smart" program, and tried to install the drivers through the Windows driver auto install. No luck, it won't do it over the USB  printer cable, and doesn't even see the printer.

I see people talking about stepping backwards in the firmware, but I cannot do that because the printer is no longer connected to the computer and will not install.
I need to be able to just install the drivers without the "HP Smart" software getting int he way of the process, and without the printer being hooked up. I can find no way to do this, because the HP site forces me t download the "HP Smart" software.

Then I need to ditch the firmware update even though it doesn't seem like I can connect the printer to the computer. It seems like the Firmware update has made it impossible for the printer to communicate with the computer or network without going into "Service Error 79" cycles of rebooting.

I'm extraordinarily angry at this point, I've wasted 3 hours trying to get this printer function like it did a few days ago. I just bought new ink cartridges from HP for it, so I'm like $900 vested what is currently a useless timesink.
How do I get this thing to operate?