Turn off the Sansa and slide the lock switch towards hold. Hold the center REC button (on the left side of the Sansa) while connecting it to the PC and it should now be recognized as 16MB-FORMAT. If you open a windows explorer window (My Computer) the Sansa will appear as this new icon.
Simply create a folder inside 16mb format drive this new window, by right clicking and selecting New Folder, and rename the folder to Sansa.fmt. Note that this will do a force format on the device erasing all files…
Caution!! DO NOT USE THE WINDOWS FORMAT COMMAND ON THIS PARTITION (WIndows command). Use the “folder trick” only. The presence of a folder named sansa.fmt tells the Sansa to format itself automatically once you disconnect.
This will erase all media from the Sansa, and you will have to reload the device. It will give you a “clean slate” and the device will operate normally.
Hope it works.
