hey everyone! well, I have been using my Empeg for almost a year now, and it's suddenly got a glitch that has been getting on my nerves a little. When I boot the player up, it searches for my playlists, visuals, etc, but always comes up with a blank playlist. It never used to do this! any ideas how I can make it remember the playlist again?

Do you have two drives mine used to do that because one of the drives wouldn't show up sometimes.

nope, I just have the one 20 gig drive..

it's been REALLY cold here lately, maybe that has something to do with it?

If the cold were the problem, I would have expected a disk not found error. Possible, though.

Could you have corrupted your database/playlist/tags files in /drive0/var?

Another possibility, there is a FAQ entry for clearing out a bad playlist or song out of the startup option. Perhaps that will clear it.

Actually, I HAVE been getting that error.. just started this morning.

But, the problem with the playlist not being saved between powerups was still around for a few days before it got super-duper-cold. It's well below 0 F here in Chicago right now.

I don't think I've uploaded any bad tracks to the player.. and once I actually load up a new playlist, everything works just fine again!

You're not leaving the empeg in the car at night are you?

Actually, I HAVE been getting that error.. just started this morning.

Then it's definitely disk drive trouble. Click Here.

yeah, I have been... it hasn't been a problem until recently, when it got BRUTALLY cold out. Normally, I have a nice garage, but I've been staying in hotels a lot, which of course means outdoor parking

That's probably why it's been happening, then. Click here.

crud.. so you think maybe there's a problem with the disk itself? I've done pretty much every bugfix I know of for the "HDD not found contact support" screen, including the negative spike bug, new cable, etc. Would operating the unit in really cold temperatures cause damage to the disk, or would it just not boot?

did you also check for the loose IDE header solder joints?

I haven't had a chance to get back to my electronics bench in a few days.. I'll have to check that tomorrow afternoon. If they're loose, what can be done about it?

Solder it. Or send it in for repair. Just like it says in the FAQ.

well, I found that extreme cold was causing the player to not want to boot on some mornings. I've started bringing the player inside at night, and haven't had the problem since.

However, I'm still getting the problem where I boot it up, and it takes quite a while to start, and always says that there's no playlist loaded. When I load one up, it takes it a few seconds to get the list loaded (way more than it ever used to).

Could this be the result of a blown fuse on the permanent power wire?

Once it starts booting, the power wiring is not related to the boot up time.

If it takes a long time to boot, have you looked at this FAQ entry?

thanks for the tip, I'll try forcing it to rebuild the whole database this weekend. I don't seem to remember anything odd happening that would have directly caused this event, i.e. no HDD crashes, etc. I'll post again when I've tried rebuilding everything and let you know how it goes.

Thanks