Randy,

I'm going to start by telling you the truth.  I don't know what's causing
the problem you're seeing.  I've forwarded your question to some of the
other devlopers and testers on the team and I'll pass along any answers
that I get.  I'm not famaliar with the Compaq PA1 MP3 player, but perhaps
one of them are. There are an unbelieveable number of different players in
the test lab, so if this is a common problem there is a good chance that
I'll get an answer.  If not, hopefully someone else on the newsgroup can
help.

Now, having said that, here is the list of things that I do when I'm in a
similar situation.  All of the systems that I use here at the office are
test-systems.  I routinely format the drives and re-install operating
systems, etc.  I would be very careful trying some of these things on my
home-machine with my personal media collection.  Word to the wise -- BACKUP
BACKUP BACKUP!!

I've been doing a lot of testing lately with "almost ready to ship"
portable media players, both flash and hard-drive based.  They are terribly
ill-behaved when we first get them.  When they get into a state where they
don't sync I have a few things that I routinely try. These are all fairly
heavy-handed and will result in the loss of data on the device, but they
usually work.  I try each of these one at a time until things are back to
normal.  This is sorta the equivalent of calling tech-support and having
them say "Just reinstall".  

Device troublshooting steps
===========================
1.  Power cycle the device.
2.  Reset the device.
3.  Format the device.
5.  Re-flash the device with the latest firmware from the manufacurer
6.  Format the device again after flashing it.

Once you've done all of that, you can basically eliminate the device as
being part of the problem.  You will loose all of the music off of the
device but at least you've made progress.  The next area to concentrate is
the driver that supports the device.  You can manipulate the driver from
the device manager.  Start->Run->"devmgmt.msc".  

Driver troublshooting steps
===========================
1.  Check to see if the driver is reporting any errors.
2.  Double-click on the device and run through the troubleshooting steps on
the general tab.
3.  Disable the device - reboot - enable the device - reboot
4.  Uninstall the driver, reboot, plug the device back in
5.  Uninstall the driver and install the latest drivers from the
manufacturer.

Ok, There are a few more things you can do to manually remove the driver,
but they are fairly  dangerous, so I'll save those in case you really need
them.  If all of that doesn't fix the problem then you can go attack it
from WMP's side.  I put WMP stuff last because it has the most potential to
mess up your music collection.  Be careful here!

WMP troubleshooting steps
=========================
1.  Install all of the latest updates
2.  Re-install WMP
3.  Re-build your media library (Danger!  If you don't have the settings
right here you can loose all of the customizations you've made to the meta-
data on your collection.  Beware!!  And, if your collection is large this
step can take hours!).

Hopefully something in that set will jar the setup back into working.  If
those things don't fix it then youre probably looking at some some kind of
mismatched DLL's.  But, we'll cross tha bridge when we come to it.

Hope that helps!