robgrafton , Never Ever change the firmware. That is the last thing you'll ever want to do, as you'll likely brick it by a wrong firmware flash. Have a look in the Dead Players section and you'll understand.
From your symptoms, it seems that it is a likely memory hack issue, and i'll suggest that you format your player with MP3 Utilities Disk Tools, the guide is here
http://www.mympxplayer.org/how-to-re...ck-vt2400.html
You'll most likely end up with a lesser capacity, maybe 1GB or 2GB, or even lesser.