OK, SUCCESS. I fiddled around a bit, put a paperclip into the top headphone remote socket (not hi-tech stuff I agree, but I was at my wit's end), and having got the player to start up and the screen to spark a bit, I replaced the remote I've been using into the top and tried turning it on one last time...and it came back to life!!! Quickly initialized disk, and now I'm uploading my songs again! I have lost a vertical line of pixels on the screen (about 3 or 4 pixels wide) but other than that all is fine! I know it's not a great fix but if it helps?