I had something similar happen to me this morning. I did a soft reset and it wouldn't take my passcode. I tried 7 of the 8 tries it gives you and then did another soft reset. This time it popped up that it needed a SIM card inserted, which US Cellular doesn't use! After messing with it doing soft resets and power downs, it finally got back to semi normal, although I lost EVERYTHING
It even wiped all of the pics off of my memory card! Sorry I know that doesn't help your (or my) problem, but it feels a little better getting it out there...