I had the same problem. The Zen Micro goes to the Creative intro screen then stops. I was able to remove the 6gig micro drive and I tried to access in my CFII slot on my media reader. The Seagate ST1 drive was bad. I was able to get a new drive from a WD portable USB drive on sale. $39.99. I installed the WD drive, reformated and installed the firmware again. It works good as new.
If all you can get to is the recovery screen there is a good chance it is a bad drive. Creative told me the repairs would start at $100. The player was 3 weeks out of warranty. There are couple of good sites that explain how to get the drive out.
John
May 2007