Stuck on please wait...

Question

Hi! You emailed me a solution and I tried everything that you told me to do. I downloaded the firmware upgrade and tried to reconnect to go into recovery mode to revive the player. The window doesn't pop up saying that it found new hardware. Nothing works still.
It shows that the player is connected to the hard drive "USB connected" and is charging. When I disconnect the player, it gets stuck on "please wait" and can't be turned off unless the player is reset. When I start up Yahoo Jukevbox I get the error "Device Synchronization Failed: Error 0x80004002".
This problem first occured when we got our new hard drive. It seems as though the hard drive recognizes the player but maybe something fried it when connecting it the first time?
Any suggestions or just punt??? :)