Quote:
my main issue right now is that when I pull out my empeg and put it back in it always says 'end of playlist'

We *JUST* went through this with someone else in another thread. I had this same problem recently myself when I had a lose hard disk cable.

The problem is that your disk hardware trouble has caused the dynamic data partition to become corrupted. This partition is where the current running order of songs is stored. It is written to each time you try to select a playlist (hence the slowness and freezes when starting up a playlist), and it is read from each time the player boots (hence the lack of playlists at boot time).

To solve the problem, do the steps below, in this exact order. (I'm going to FAQ this as soon as I can, most likely using the language I'm posting right here. Since this is the third time it's come up, I'll call it "frequent". )

First:
Solve all of your disk drive hardware problems. Make absolutely certain all of your hardware problems are solved. Nothing, absolutely none of the other steps below, will help if you're still having hardware trouble. This means going through every single step in the disk drive hardware troubleshooting FAQ I just linked, and making certain that you're not having any of the listed problems.

Second:
Make sure you have no file system corruption by doing an e2fsck.

Third:
Rebuild your databases manually.

Fourth:
Check your hard disk for sector errors.

Fifth:
This is the step that actually solves the problem. But without all the other steps above being carefully and methodically completed, you should not attempt this step. What you need to do is fully erase the dynamic data partition. If your dynamic data partition has any bad sectors, this may re-map them on the hard disk, allowing the dynamic data partition to use good sectors for those instead.

Please note that this fifth step will erase certain other stored data, as well. You will lose your equalizer preset details, your radio tuner stored presets, etc., so write those things down prior to doing that last step.

Sixth:
If this solves the problem, Great. But still, pay close attention to the way your player is behaving. If it the problem crops up again after the player being OK for a while, consider that you might have a bad hard disk (and should order a replacement ASAP) or that you might still be having some other kind of disk hardware trouble such as a dry solder joint on the IDE header (and should be sending the player in for repair).

If it does not solve the problem, and you're certain you've done all the above steps methodically (especially the part about ruling out hardware trouble), then you might be having trouble with the total number of tracks on your player. There is a ceiling in the number of tracks that the player's database features can index at once. In order for this to be the issue, the number of tracks on your player would have to be in the tens of thousands. If this seems to be your problem, then there are a couple of hacks you can do which will slightly improve the database ceiling limit. Search the empeg BBS for the "max_fid" hack. But based on your problem description, I don't think this is the problem you're having. I think it's the corrupted dynamic data partition.

Let us know how you fare.