Mark said: Delete the database files and do a fresh sync. Details somewhere in the FAQ.

Tony said (in the FAQ):Reboot the player, and after the player software starts, press q (enter) to get to a shell prompt.

I said (in the original post that started this thread): Hyperterminal works in that it displays the bootup information from the player; but apparently it will not accept any input from my keyboard. I cannot use the "q" command to get to the linux shell on the player in order to copy my 18 GB drive to the new 40 GB drive.

And unfortunately, even if I could get to the shell prompt and delete the database, I cannot re-synch my 18 GB drive, because the dying sectors are in the database, and the last two times I tried to synch that drive (and I'll never try it again!) the synchronization process took over an hour while the heads seeked and re-seeked trying to read the bad sectors, and about 10% of my music disappeared.

I think my first priority has to be getting a shell prompt so I can at least attempt to copy the 18GB drive over to the 40 GB drive. At that point, the 18 GB drive gets retired forever, and I'll work on getting any corrupted data repaired on the 40 GB drive.

sometimes when you add a new drive, certain drives refuse to be a slave and will only work as a master
Both of my drives are IBM TravelStars, which are known to be non-problematic as far as compatibility problems and other weirdnesses.

Can anybody offer any suggestions on how to get my command prompt working? I have Beta 2.0RC1 developer on both drives, and because of the bad sectors on the 18GB drive I don't think I can install any other software version on it. I am using "Hyperterminal Private Edition v.6.3" by Hilgraeve as my terminal program. Before I started this disk swap process, I was able to get a shell prompt (on the 18 GB drive) using this program, but now I cannot.

I am puzzled...

tanstaafl.