OK. What happened - I had the Palm Sync running. I normally don't run that when doing this sort of thing. Oops.

So now I powered it up when it requested it and now it's rewriting to flash. Yay.

Meanwhile, here's an interesting question: Should I have left the USB plugged-in to the back of the unit? XP recognized a new USB device and then subsequently complained (while the flash write was taking place) that it didn't recognize the device. I was going to transcribe the exact text but it already went away. I think if I had picked it it would have given me the opportunity to go down that "install a driver and mess things up royally" route again. :-)

At any rate, the player is booted now and the partition pumping has commenced.