For some reason my nokia 7610 is stuck on lock, (menu, then *)?

For some reason my Nokia 7610 is stuck on lock, (menu, then *), and it wont unlock itself, when i press the menu button, it responds by saying i need to follow that with the (*) button, but when i press * it immediately responds by saying i need to
"Press Unlock and then * "
so i know the *star button is working because it respons to it, but refuses to unlock itself, even when i take out the battery and reset the pohone, when it turns on it automatically locks itself again, for some reason. Could anybody help me with this problem?
If you can, could you respond with your solution, and send it to my email address, thank you
master_mc@hotmail.co.uk

Mark
May 2006