Hi bdjohns,
Reading from the problems you mentioned, I think you may have a HACKED player. This is where the player has been hacked to show more memory (8GB) than what is physically installed in the player (it may actually on be 4GB instead).
Have a look at this post here:
How To: Removing Memory Hack. Follow the instructions in there and see if that clears the hacked memory from your player.
Let us know of the result once you've done that.
Then try loading your player with songs and see if that problem still happens or magically gets resolved?
Look forward to hearing from you.