[joepie]

I'm not entirely sure. My guess is that you won't be able to boot after the format, other than going the firmware update route. Make sure you have an sd with the RC on it beforehand and make sure it's a good copy.

If you are ok to lose your book/current data/settings etc. It might be the best thing to do atm. It's very hard to pinpoint the root causes of the issues you have from your descriptions.

Problems might be partly caused by your desktop. I would certainly try to hook up to another computer (WinXP) to see if it's the same.

If you're certain that there is a problem with the internal memory of the ereader, you'd better format it anyway. If the internal memory isn't reliable, you run risk of losing your data at any given time.

Maybe you have a backup of your books on your desktop or somewhere else. Then you'd only be losing settings and extra applications.

In your stead, I would format the internal memory asap, because I believe it's solid state memory and just every now and again a small corruption may happen in those. Maybe, just maybe that is the cause of some of your problems as your system files are on the internal memory as well - I'm thinking of issue #2 now.

Ofcourse there is no guarantee that formatting solves anything. Should the memory prove to be broken, you have all the more cause to send the machine to PB. That would be a generic problem, not really PB related. The memory in my 302 is produced by Philips.