Go into the Hijack menu, activate Show Flash Savearea, and tell me what you see in location 0x1c.

Thanks.

Also, connect the serial cable, and you should see the player in a crash loop of sorts, right? AFTER gathering the info for me (above), you can "fix" it by having the player reiniialize all of its saved settings. Just hit control^C, and then start the player with player -i

Cheers