ok guys, a good result finally. anyone who has this problem, i have an answer. after sifting through the pages and pages of atraclife's (great) forums, i decided to firstly uninstall/ reinstall connect via this very helpful FAQ: CONNECT Player has become very unstable and I would like to reinstall it. 1) If the database is corrupted during transfer and CONNECT Player becomes unusable, it is advisable to uninstall and reinstall the software with the add/remove program function in the Control Panel. Make sure that the database is deleted as well: Go to the Windows Explorer, and make sure to make hidden files visible (go to the Tools on the menu and click the Folder Options, then on the View tab, select the Show hidden files and folder.) Browse to C:\Document and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Sony Corporation\CONNECT Player\Library and delete all the files located in this folder. 2) Reinstall the CONNECT Player software: Make sure that your default Web browser is Internet Explorer. Other browsers (Netscape, Firefox...) are not supported and may lead to malfunctions or the impossibility to install the software. If you install the bundled software, immediately install the update. After downloading the CONNECT Player and before installing the update, make sure that you close all the tasks, especially SonicStage, anti-virus software, spy/malware removers, etc. Make sure that you have downloaded and installed the latest CONNECT Player version available here. To check the version, click Help, and then click About CONNECT Player. The version will appear in a new window. Importing a large amount of music may take up to 4 or 5 hours. When launching the CONNECT Player for the first time, make sure you follow the CDDB (Gracenote) onscreen procedure. Otherwise, your audio CD's may not be detected. [thanks to ishiyoshi] then, unfortunately, i had to ''initailise the disk'' on my player, deleting every song. *sigh*. after all this, and a number of restarts/reboots, i went into CP, fingers crossed, and IT WORKED!! it finally recognised my player, and got to 100%.. now ahead lies the task of putting all the songs back on.. *boo* also i switched to another USB port, dunno if that had anything to do with it, but it installed the player perfectly. Connect is still the worst software i've ever come across, but i certainly wasn't losing half of the fuctions of this player, that makes it what it is.. why should i? after shelling out 300euro.. anyways, hopefully it wont ever happen again. thanks to anyone who helped, in this post, or outside..