"Firmware Problem"?

I've had my Creative Zen Vision: M (30GB) for just over 10 months now - I received it as a Christmas gift last year. It's frozen a number of times on some of my tracks, but I've always had no problem rebooting it before. (A couple of months ago it couldn't read any of my files, but a firmware upgrade fixed that.)

Today, while rewinding on a track, it froze on me. After I rebooted it, about 2/5 into the rebuilding process it pauses, restarts the rebuilding process, gets 2/5 into it again and then tells me I have a "Firmware Problem". I headed to the recovery screen, upgraded the firmware (I'd been using 1.51 before), and waited as it restarted itself.

The same screen comes up.

I went again and did clean up, tried to reinstall the firmware to make sure that it had installed properly (it had). The "Firmware Problem" screen comes up every time.

I've tried everything short of formatting it - because it's near-filled up with video files that I don't have on my laptop (nor any way to get them again) anymore, I'd like to hold on to them. Is there any way I can get my Zen to work again without having to format?