Okay so my sansa fuze is pretty old, about 2-3 years. It’s gotted to the point where its WSoD’ed on me and I’ve tried everything. I manually put the firmware on, installed via sansa media converter, and, since its out of warranty, installed custom firmware onto it (rockBOX). At first I could see “Sansa” exploding, and then screen goes white, but now its just to the point of bootup white. And now theres a crack/watermark I guess on a small part of the screen. Is it bricked? Help please.
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It’s rev 1 btw
and at somepoints, it seems I cannot fiddle with the filesystem corrrectly. I’ll have very little options when I right click Sansa FUZE 4GB, and also on the “Internal Memory” folder within. If I format and update, I get all my options back. I’m trying a bunch of different things at the moment so I will try and update as much as I can
Try to do things methodically. First, if you can, uninstall Rockbox. Find directions at www.rockbox.org.
You won’t see the Sansa start screen if you install Rockbox.
Then reinstall the Sansa firmware manually. Go to the Firmware Update thread and don’t download the updater–in fact, uninstall it from your computer, it’s useless. Go to the All Regions link and download the zip file for your Fuze version. Unzip it on your computer.
To force the unit into MSC mode for installing the firmware, turn it off. Slide the Power button down to Hold, to show an orange dot. Open Windows Explorer on your computer. On the Fuze, hold down << while connecting. The Fuze should show up as two disc drives, Sansa Fuze and Removeable Disc.
Drag-and-drop the unzipped firmware file, FuzeA.bin, onto your Sansa Fuze driveletter and it will install when you disconnect.
Okay, I did manual update first before, and then installed rockBOX, pretty much just the other way around of what you said. I did all of that before pretty much. I saw the Sansa screen before, like the first time it started WSing, which was about two months ago (yes, I’m just now deciding to do something about it) and two days ago when I first turned it on, it was just complete white screen. No sansa blow-up or anything. Next day there was a watermark type thing in the bottom right (A crack? I don’t believe it was dropped.) I think it is bricked to be honest. I’ll upload a picture soon.
oh and also, I had to replace the battery, and it worked fine after I did. Only thing that went wrong was the faceplate cracked a little. Also, most of the time, the RoL lights up.
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I’m taking pictures right now, one second.
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Okay I made a picture pointing out somethings. I don’t know if this forum supports [IMG] codes, and also sorry if it doesn’t auto-resize
I have the feeling it’s bricked–never seen the blue ring only partly illuminated–but there’s always the possibility that your two firmwares are battling for control, which is why I’d suggest getting rid of Rockbox if you can. The fewer variables, the better.
And, um, what happens after the white screen if you hold up the power button for 15 seconds, after it goes black, for a soft reset, and then hold down the << button to boot into Sansa firmware?
ONE FIX may be the whacking of the unit. I am serious. My Sansa Fuze v1 also had the white screen problem, but when booting into RockBox it continued the playback where it left off before. The keys and the wheel remained responsive. I could not tell what exactly went on when booting into the original firmware, since that I did not shut down playing anything. However, the wheel appeared to remain functional, because the light came on when turning. On another forum I came across an entry where the writer whacked it against the table and next time the Fuze worked again… I tried it on my knee, to be a little bit gentler with it. IT WORKED. It comes on fine, boots into both the native OS and into RockBox. I should add that it turned on with the white screen before, but a restart always helped. All these symptoms make me think that there may be a hardware (bad contact?) issue behind the problem. I hope this may help somebody… G
Ditto, Ditto, Ditto. Tried it all. Even had tech support hold my hand thru all the steps. Conclusion. Bricked!. But wait. After reading this forum…Hallalulah!! Praise the LORd! All it takes is one good whack!!! Back to normal. Thank you Jesus.
Add my name to the list of those for whom whacking the device did the trick. Like a lot of other people, I tried just about everything. When I first started getting the white screen, resetting helped for awhile, but the the white screen returned. It got to the point where nothing helped, and then I found this forum. I whacked it once on a table, and voilâ! Thanks to everyone for the good advice. I hope it lasts, because my fear is that it’s a sign that the Fuze is dying.
This reminds me of the following famous quote, depicted in the film, The Longest Day (1962) about the 1944 Normandy Invasion, D-Day:
Cmdr. Colin Maud, RN
“Get off the beach! Move inland! Get off the beach! Move inland! The sooner we get off this beach, the sooner they’ll stop this blasted shelling. It’s very bad for the dog.”
“As my grandmother used to say, anything mechanical, give it a good bash.”
The latter quote is a classic, Commander Maud, the Beachmaster, is talking to a crew, trying to start their tank. He whacks the tank with a shillelagh, and it fires right up!
If you have a chance to watch this black-and-white widescreen classic, with its all star cast (understatement), you won’t regret it. You wouldn’t think that something so crude and basic would work, but there are multiple reports of success here. The Fuze is one tough cookie, to be sure. Just don’t whack the thing hard enough that you’d crack the case or display. Obviously, a little jostle seems to do the trick. Amazing.
Bob :smileyvery-happy:
I was curious about Cmdr Maud. Check this entry in Wikipedia. Awesome. He really did bring his shillelagh to the beach.
I’ve en seeing the white screen a lot within the last few weeks and my fix is always whacking it on my nightstand a few times. But now its come to the point where I turn it on and I see the white screen and I can’t even turn it off.
I love this player, never had any problems with it. Today it white screened on me and I had no bloody clue what to do. I had been charging it and didn’t pay attention to it after I disconnected it. Two of my kids asked why it was glowing, but I ignored them because I was watching a good movie. When I saw it “glowing” I was convinced it was dead. I tried connecting it to the PC again and it gave me that “does not recognize…blah blah”. I recently had a bad virus and had to have my PC practically rebuilt and lost all my music. I haven’t backed up the music on my fuze and I thought it was all a goner. I must say I was very hesitant to “whack” it and the first few tries yielded nothing. I thought of all my mp3s lost so I really whacked it and YEAH!!! so after this long explanation, I just have to say thank you to whoever did the first “whacking” and let us know that it was a good fix! :smileyvery-happy:
This just happened to me, and i’m not sure if I determined a possible solution, or what. First of all, I have the rockbox software installed on my v2 model, so I tried to reinstall the base rockbox software. I also took out my microsd chip around this time. The screen was still white, so I unplugged my device, scrolled the amount down that I normally do in order to acess my music folder, and clicked the center button repeatedly. I immediately heard music, which is a sign of device function. I took the case off and shook it a bit. I shut off my sansa, and restarted in the normal sandisc software mode. To my surprise, the software boot up.
TL;DR:
-The WSOD may or may not be caused by the disconnection of the screen from the device.
-If you can somehow make it play music, there is still hope!
-Dont give up! Try as many things as you can think of, maybe even download rockbox firmware or pressing buttons for long periods of time.
Also: if you have given up on yr device, please try and sell parts online! Thanks, and good luck.
