I faced exactly the same 'hang on boot up' problem today. My log from hyperterminal looks the same so I guess there is no use posting it. However, unlike Amthar, I have been using the player for about 2 weeks already with no problems except for today's

I recently upgraded to 1.3 and did a couple of syncs with it no problem. I dont' know if this is worth mentioning, but today I had 2 other errors during sync before the player simply froze. First, while synching emplode gave me an error message about something going wrong during STAGE 10 or the sync process. I rebooted emplode and the player and everying seemed back to normal with the songs successfully transferred. On the next sync, again, I received an error about something going wrong during STAGE 5 of the sync. The next thing I know the player just hangs at boot up and does not want to start. I tried upgrading with firmware and that's when I got the 'BADPUMP' error.

I read the 2 FAQ entries related to this issue, as well as this thread, and it looks like it can be narrowed down to either a loose cable OR a bad hard drive. I read in other posts as well as this one that the loose cable problems usually occur only within a few hours of getting the player (because it was banged around during shipping). But my unit worked fine for two weeks, as well as today just before I took it home (btw, in a pelican case). So, it it hard for me to imagine that the cable came loose just in that short period of time, what do you think, could that be the cause of it?

Also, you said that in case the unit has two drives (like mine) one could be taken out so that the connector could be used with the first drive. In this case, how do I know which drive to take out, and which one stores my music (approx only 2 gigs now)? Thanks.