Try hooking it up to your computer with the serial connection made and plug in the player. Capture the boot log. When the boot begins to load the player application, hit "CTRL-C" to stop the boot. You should be at a shell prompt. Try "player -i" and see if that helps. That should restart the player without any playlist configuration, and might bring it up cleanly.
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Paul Grzelak
200GB with 48MB RAM, Illuminated Buttons and Digital Outputs