Glad I’ve found this thread as I have the same problem.
I’ve had four Sansa Clip+ players during the last 5 or 6 years - my wife uses one for audiobooks, I have one in my van and one in the kitchen plus a spare I bought when I read that Sandisk were ditching the Clip+ a few years back but for the last few weeks one of them has frozen on startup and won’t go any further.
The startup display sequence is Sansa - Flower image - Sansa - Flower image… and that’s it, just freezes - and it’s not recognised by my laptop.
Is there some sort of button combination on startup that might get over this problem? Or is there another solution I can try?
I’ve read the answers to the original poster in this thread but the suggestions haven’t worked on my device.