Tom.
I too am having the same issue with a USRP2 I received this week. I
went back through the junk drawer, found a 1G SD card, removed the
filesystem and partition on it, flashed it with the latest s/w and
fpga bitstream, verified the flash, plugged it in and powered up. It
works properly.
The SD card that was shipped to me was also labeled 20091209.
Jeff