Symptom of Death Flash?
 

So my friend is explaining to me how she is having trouble with her 2001 dodge ram 1500 with the 5.9l engine. What she has explained to me has lead me to believe it is the death flash. I do plan to check under the hood to see if the PCM label says it was an authorized change just to be positive, but I'm pretty sure all 2000 and 2001 ram trucks came from the factory with this "Death Flash".

What she tells me: When she first gets into the truck, she has difficulty getting it started. She will turn the key and nothing, then after some time of trial and error and will crank and finally start, but a rough start. Now when I heard that I also thought of a faulty crank sensor, or the solenoid is bad in the starter, because I had similar problems in my 98 with the 5.2, but she does have the '01, which leads me back to the death flash.
After it is finally started, the gas gauge starts acting funky as well. The gas gauge reads empty when the day prior it was filled up, and not driven after. 5 minutes later the gauge slowly goes up, and slowly back down. Now I don't believe there was prior issue with the fuel tank, or if she was on a hill or not, but I'm thinking those aren't too great of possibilities in this case.

Now if it this thing called the "Death Flash", any sort of programmer will work, correct? Such as, hypertech, SCT, hemifever, etc.? I have the hemifever, and will most likely reccomend it due to the power gains I recieved as well, but I'm not sure if she wants to throw down that much cash at the moment. Thank you.

That has nothing to do with the death flash. All the death flash did was to retard timing to prevent ping. There's other electrical issues going on. You're right to suspect the crank sensor or other issues. Check all grounds first and go from there.