A couple questions about my Sansa 250 - help please?

Hi everyone! I’ve had my Sansa 250 2 GB mp3 player for a couple years now, but recently, something seems off about it, but I can’t tell if part of it is me being overly cautious, or if something has gone wrong, and I was hoping someone here might take pity on me and help me find out.

Back in March, I got an autorun virus. The whole computer ended up with a new install of windows, but thanks to the repair guy I took it too it still had the virus. (The virus is gone now, I got rid of it soon after I took it home thanks to online help, plus Malwarebytes Anti-Malware.) My sansa got plugged into it before the virus was completely gone, though, and the computer did not recognize it at the time (the media player needed an upgrade before it could), and I can’t tell since then if something is different about it, or if it’s me not remembering correctly.

Here’s what I cannot remember - when you plug in the player to the computer, I don’t remember the option of ‘Open to view files in Windows Explorer’ being an option. Has Sansa always used that option? It worries me since it was one of the symptoms of the autorun infection. I’ve disabled autoruns on this computer, and I’ve searched the player, but still.

I also can’t remember if, before all this happened, what was on the player was the same as it is now. I think it used to open and have nothing on it besides a folder labeled “Record” when opened through my computer. Now though, when I double-click it in ‘My computer’, it goes to MUSIC Specific Storage, which is an icon that looks like a harddrive icon, and inside that are folders for Music, Playlists, and Record, as well as the music on the player. It says it has 1.89 GB of storage space.

What it will do that make me wonder as well is this: I will be listening, and in the middle of a song will come a few seconds of another song. It’s been only one song out of all of them, and it’s always a few seconds of the same song, which I haven’t had on there for awhile now. (Barbie Girl, for the curious.)

I formatted it from the MUSIC Specific Storage before, as I had noticed that the space was lower than it should have been. (It said there was 1.69 free of 1.89) I had checked it to see what was going on by deleting everything from the player, unplugging it from the computer, and plugging it back in. The player said it was empty, but the computer said there were 362 copies of one song on it. That was when I formatted it. The odd thing was, even after I formatted it from the music specific storage, and have not put Barbie Girl back on since then, one song still had a few seconds of said song in the middle of it.

So, basically - am I remembering right, should it open without any folders on it, or should it have the pattern of ‘double click on mp3 player in my computer, open Music Specific Storage, then have space for music’? What could be making it act funny, and keep inserting a few seconds of one song into another? Is the fact that I have had problems with this machine since March making me see problems where they don’t exist? DX ^^;

Please do note, I’ve used this player for a couple years and I love it - I just seem to be having all kinds of technical issues this year. :wink:

I’ve only recently bought one of the c250 Sansas, so I don’t know a lot yet, but one of the things I read is you can choose, in the settings menu, under USB, either of two different modes, and the way the player comes up  when you plug it into the computer depends on which mode you have selected.

When I first took the player out of the packaging, that USB option did not appear; however, after I used the ‘Sansa Updater’ from the Sandisk website, it was there as part of the new firmware update.  I recommend checking this out just to be sure, in any case.