Ok, I think the problem is solved. I did have a static ip on the player instead of letting it assign an ip on it's own. Well, I booted into xp, changed the player to DHCP, rebooted and reloaded windows 7. I started up Emplode, connected to the player and voila! It started synching with no crashes! yaaaay!!

I loaded around 2 or 3gb worth of data with no problems so I guess it was the static ip that was causing the problem. I don't think it was a conflicting address but whatever it was it works now.

Now my only problem is every time I synch I get a long checking disk integrity ordeal that I have to sit through. I have two hdds=130gb so it takes forever to get through. I do get failed to unmask ide errors every once in a blue moon but I know the drives are good. So maybe an ide header or bad filesystem? I did have to re-solder the header a year or so ago but I haven't touched it since so there shouldn't be any cold solder joints. Any suggestions?