The database is very hard to corrupt; it's just all the *1 files containing song information built into a packed format.

If you use hyperterminal, you can force a rebuild like this:

rwm
rm /drive0/var/database
rm /drive0/var/playlists
exit

(don't do a "rom" before the exit; the player will rebuild the database and save it back to disk, then remount read-only).

Hugo