So, in essence, the reason the Micro appeared dead was because there was absolutely no life whatsoever in the battery, because it hadn't been properly charged for yonks. I tried it with another micro and that micro wouldn't 'glow' either. Battery is OK - tried it in another Zen - but the CHARGER is NOT working. I thought I'd change tack and before I took it apart, would look for the simple solution - battery and charger. It wouldn't even finish the recovery process and the whole thing made me think the hard drive had died, though I hadn't dropped it or anything. Tried all of the options it gives - reboot, reformat etc and nada. Plugged it back into the charger and tried turning it on - immediately went to the recovery screen and I thought 'uh oh'. Came to turn it on the following day and it just WOULD NOT boot up. Anyhoo, I wasn't too concerned about the glowing, and thought it had charged OK. A few days ago, plugged in the Micro for recharging from the charger in the wall and it seemed to charge, as the indicator on the micro in the top right of the screen was flashing, but the micro wasn't 'breathing' (y'know, the way they glow on and off when they charge). This sounds simple, but perhaps it will work - it did for mine. I had the exact same problem as you and just couldn't figure it out - in fact, it was your post that attracted my attention on the net! It looks like it has a bad hard drive at the moment. I've also tried upgrading the firmware, but when I open the program that allows me to upgrade, it says that the Zen Micro is not detected although it is plugged in. I've formatted this 20MB drive before, but nothing changed when I booted the MP3 player.

The size of it is only 20MB and the MP3 player is 5GB or something like that. Anyways, when I open it from My Computer, I can see 'Storage Media'. I'm not sure if it was assigned to a drive letter before it got screwed up, though. When I plug it in to my computer, I see 'Creative Zen Micro' in My Computer but it is not assigned to a drive letter. I've tried all the options yet they all did nothing at all (besides reboot). Here, it tells you the firmware and gives you a couple options: When you boot it, it automatically goes to recovery mode.

Creative mp3 player software