Hi, my Sansa clip has been working fine for over a year now, but recently, it stopped playing music files. Everything else (menus, radios, etc.) works fine, but when I select a music file (or podcast or audio book file), I get the normal starting screen with the time counter at 00:00 and the pause symbol. When I press “play”, the pause symbol changes to the play symbol, but nothing else happens: the file doesn’t play and the time counter is frozen at 00:00.
The player is recognized by my computer, but I can’t see any music files on it and I can’t copy files onto it if I connect it by just plugging in the USB cable.
Interestingly, when I use the recording function, the recordings will play without problems.
I tried the following:
* reformat the player : same problem
* connect to PC by putting the clip in “hold” and pressing the center button: Then I can copy files onto the player, and at first the files played fine, but after a day, the same problem (files won’t play) re-occured.
* flash to latest firmware: same problem
* format the player from PC: same problem
I’m running out of ideas. Any suggestions? Thanks!
I have the same issue as TGlimm with my Sansa 8G clip V02.01.16A. I use my player mostly with Rhapsody. As with TGlimm, my Sansa FM radio works fine, and when I have my Clip connected to my laptop, Rhapsody sees all the music on the Clip, and I can even play the music on the Clip in Rhapsody. But when I try to play music on my Clip, using ear buds, as with TGlimm, the player seems to be stuck. When I hit Pause (press 12 o’clock on the wheel) the indicator toggles between pause and play modes. But the song does not start playing. Also, I should mention that I am able to navigate normally throughout the menu structure. I am hoping that there is a solution and that it does not involve reformatting my Sansa, because I have around 1400 songs on it. If I must reformat, I saw somewhere that someone had mentioned that I can just create a playlist in Rhapsody, then drag my music from my Sansa to the playlist. I assume that this just copies the directory, not the actual songs. So once I fix my issue, I can just drag the items in the playlist back onto my Sansa.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Update: Just as mysteriously as the problems had shown up, they resolved themselves… Mostly. Somehow, after about a week of trouble, everything worked again. There are occasional glitches, for instance, this morning, the clip turned off and when I turned it back on, all files were gone.
Seems like the player is on its way out. I guess they’re not meant to last much longer than a year or two.
My 4gb Clip is doing exactly what tglimm described. It wont play the Mp3 files, the computer doesn’t see them when I hook up the Clip and Overdrive doesn’t recognize the Clip for downloads. The FM radio works fine but I was in the middle of a really good book!. I haven’t tried reformatting it since, I don’t know how. (I don’t know how to do service packs either). I’m about as technical as a rock. This Clip was received on July 15th of this year as a replacement under warranty for my other Clip, which just gave up the ghost earlier this summer. A less than 3 month old player should function, don’t you think?
Most of the files I download are audiobooks from the library through Overdrive. Every once in awhile I rip and sync a CD but I don’t have any of those on the Clip right now.
I’m very sad and frustrated about this situation. Any suggestions on how to fix this issue?
