Same results here: "Synchronise failed while writing player configuration. Connection timed out (error 0x8004003e)."

I'm doing a USB sync from a Windows 2000 machine to a Mark 2 running 2.00b3. Interestingly, it's failing after it transfers tunes and rebuilds the database, so I have a semblance of a working sync. However, it doesn't complete, and I have to cycle the machines to get them to agree on a new cookie. Attempting to re-sync after this failure is no good, because one end (I suspect the empeg) is expecting to finish the previous sync.