My 2nd empeg is currently rsyncing. However that will take a number of hours before it gets to the problem place).

OK, let me know how it goes. I'll get rsync setup on my spare player (I have been meaning to play with that anyway) and see if I can reproduce it. When the problem was occuring did you ever fully reboot the player? I am wondering if something got screwed up in a buffer somewhere that got cleared out after a reboot (when you installed the stock hijack) which might explain why it is behaving fine now.

-Mike