OK, I went through the whole process. I restarted not in a play list and everything seened OK. I then synced using Emplode and that went great for a change. I then deleted everything off the player exept two song for test use and resynced. To my suprise that went smoothly and the player restarted, not in a play list. I started the songs playing to test things and everything was going good but just the RIO/ song name and title/time was on the screen so to really test things out I started messing with the visuals and it started doing the same thing again. To make sure it was something to do with the visuals or that it just happened to lock up while I was messing with them I went back into hyperterm. and set the player to restart out of a playlist. The player is now playing fine, with controls and "stock" visual just fine but as soon as I mess with the visual setting it freezes again. This is sounding like the display board as per other post but I am just guessing. You guys are the Empeg gurus, not me, LOL.