My son’s Fuze has developed a very strange problem. I see similar posts but none of the suggestions have had an effect on it. This happened over a year ago and then he got an iPod Nano and became unconcerned about the Fuze.
Anyway, it has a tendency to turn on and back off again all by itself. Doesn’t stay up for more than about 5 or 10 seconds. I can use the on/off switch to turn it on but 95% of the time it just turns right back off again. I did manage to get it fully charged a day or two ago and was able to upgrade the firmware (through the firmware updater) to 1.whatever.28A. Not sure why that’s what came down instead of 31.
But that didn’t make any difference. It’s definitely out of warranty. I’ve tried the holding the on/off switch in the up position for 15, 20, 30, and 60 seconds. Hasn’t made a difference.
Does anyone have a thought what might be causing this and what might fix it?
When the device seems to turn off, press the center button and see if it responds. The display may be timing out. It’s possible that the battery may have a loose connection, or the power slider may have a bad contact.
My own Fuze was having this issue recently. It either would not turn on or would not stay turned on. It would display the splash page and then shut off, or (rarely) refresh my media and then shut off. Sometimes when it didn’t respond at all to being turned on, it would later turn on by itself. It charged fine, so the battery was not the issue. I had the newest firmware, and hadn’t added any new music or other files to the device in some time. It had never gotten wet or damaged. It wasn’t even a year old, and had never had problems before doing this.
After spending quite some time on the online tech support, I decided it was a harware problem (perhaps with the power switch). All the suggestions from tech support were unhelpful - reformatting, resetting, updating the firmware, etc etc. Because my Fuze was (just barely) still under warrentee, Sansa let me mail the broken one to them and sent me a new one.
I hope maybe this helps others having a similar problem! My suggestion is to work with tech support - try everything they suggest. If that doesn’t work, maybe they will replace the device.
Message Edited by DarkSerena on 01-29-2010 11:16 AM
Message Edited by DarkSerena on 02-02-2010 03:03 AM
That is EXACTLY what happens! Much better description than what I typed. This Fuze is at least 1.5 yrs old, probably 2 by now. I’d be surprised if they’d replace it but I guess it doesn’t hurt to find out. I just wish there was something that I could do that would fix it without that hassle.
Glad to have been of some help! There may be some way to fix it yourself if you could figure out what the problem was exactly, but that’s totally bejond my scope. I decided it was hardware because nothing I could do to the software was working, and once it seemed to start working again, but wouldn’t respond when I tried to turn it back off. So the power switch seemed most likely.
I had this problem for a while, and tried wiping the switch with electical contact cleaner (Radio Shack) on a Q-Tip. That worked briefly, but the problem kept coming bck. Eventually, before I sent it to landfill, I tried squirting the stuff directly into the top of the switch slider. The stuff blew around a bit (cleaned up with a paper towel), but it fixed the problem.
If your pc has copies of everything on the player, then format the player. If you can, format it using the player’s menu. If not, then format it using your pc, then format it again using the player’s menu. If this doesn’t help, then download the latest firmware and manually install it on the player. Did this behavior start after downloading some new music to the player? If so, then the cause might be corrupt files.
The card might be the problem. To help troubleshoot the problem, you should first try to get the player working without the card inside. After formatting it, will the player stay on properly without any songs on it? Can it play the radio properly without turning off? Does it appear that the battery is charging properly? At first I thought it might be corrupt files causing the problem, but now I think the battery on the player might be worn out. did you use the player extensively for several years?
