Frozen and unrecognized

This has been listed several times on this board and has not been resolved…

my clip is frozen and will NOT restore. I have rebooted, changed ports, and even walked away for an hour. No luck. It will also NOT show up on my Mac OSX computer–it does not exist–therefore I cannot update it.

Any other suggestions? My kid is quite disappointed as am I.

I see a pattern here. Like some of you I am also using a Mac. After my frozen screen problem I plugging it into my wife’s PC while the Sansa was turned on and it froze the PC. I had to turn it off first to plug it in even though the PC wouldn’t recognize it.

Maybe the Mac is trying to put it’s own language on an incompatible device and corrupting the memory.

Is anyone having the same problem using a PC only?

Hard reset the device by slide and hold the power button up for 10 seconds…As for MAC users, please slide the power button back to LOCK the device, then press-n-hold the center button while plugging in…then once it’s recognized on your computer, format it first to clean up things and see if you can start using it. :slight_smile: GL

Hello kmc2005 et al -

I’m having the same issue…  Brand new Sansa Clip 2Gb (right out of the box).  I plugged into a Mac Powerbook USB port to charge it up.  Left it connected for 1/2 hour (so it got a little charge), then briefly checked the menus – they looked fine.  Then I reconnected it to the Mac USB to let it finish charging (2-3 hours).  During this time I put the Mac to sleep (by closing the cover).  Next time I looked at it, the Clip display was still animated, and showed the “full-charge” symbol, so I unpluged it from the Mac USB.  As soon as I unplugged it, the Clip’s display froze…  Now with it disconnected, a hard reset will power it off, but it only powers back on to the “SanDisk Sansa” display frozen (with the blue circle illuminated).

I’ve also tried the steps you describe here - slide the power button back to LOCK, then press-n-hold the center button while plugging in (to the Mac).  Still just powers up to the frozen “SanDisk Sansa” display…  I have a Windows XP Pro machine as well – no luck there either.

So, what’s the deal?  Does a Mac = death for the Sansa Clip!?  Sure looks that way.  This one is “bricked” unless someone knows a better ‘secret handshake’ to make it responsive to re-flashing or some such…

Ok…here is something might be fun to try out :)  Cover the data lines (middle two pins) on the USB cable with tapes so that only power is working.  Hard reset the Sansa Clip again…then plug it in your PC/MAC again to see if it’s charged or the problem might go away…I’m not too familiar with MAC so can’t help you much but played around with it if you like or just return it for a new one…upgrade to the newest firmware using your PC…then select the USB mode to be MSC and plug in your MAC and do a DOS format under Disk Utility and see if this new one will work for you.  Cheers.

here is also something you could do (however, I don’t know if this software works with MAC or not)…go to this link

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb\_devices\_view.html

download the USBDeView software and see if the registry has the player in there…select it and delete it and then plug in your PC again to see if it will re-register the device and works…hope this will help.

I just posted the same problem and saw some advice in another posting. 

I switched to the hold position and then held down the power button. It shut off.  I turned it back on and  IT WORKED!!!  My Sansa 280 is now working. 

do u have sansa clip mp3 player.:smiley:

Ranaok, Lodom and Spot,

Now…if you have the device hang at “SanDisk” screen…here are the steps…very critical that you follow each step correctly or it won’t solve it (I think :))

  1. First if the device hung after using MAC
  2. Unplug it from your MAC
  3. Hard reset by pushing the power button up & hold for 10 seconds
  4. Slide the power button back into HOLD and press-n-hold center button while plugging in your MAC
  5. If your MAC recognize the device, format it…if it does not, unplug from your MAC and check to see if the problem still exists
  6. If it does, retry a few times before giving up on it…after a few tries and it still did not do anything, then there is nothing to do about it…the data corruption might have been too severe for the device to fix itself
  7. If after a few tries and it did work, format using your MAC Disk Utility as DOS FAT16 and enjoy using it.

I was able to get my hand on a MAC and tested out this and it worked.  However, different MAC configuration might have generated different corruption so can’t say it work for all but good luck.

Make sure you update the firmware if and when you can recover.

sansafix, you are a “VIP” … are you actually employed by Sandisk?

I have a question!!

Its really important!!! PLEASE HELP ASAP!!!

I bought a Sansa mp3 player (2 GB Rhapsody) like 9 months ago, while I was still living in the US. Now i came back to europe and my mp3 was working,but few day ago Ive tryed to put some songs on it,and when I turned it on it got frozen- refreshing data base and its not working any more! the batery run out and i pluged it in again-holding the center button! i lost the hardware cd or whatever my computer is asking for and i dont know what to do! we dont have a sansa store or anything like that over here!!!

PLESAE HELP!!!

You’re under the wrong forum; post to the Sansa Rhapsody forum for better response?

tamara_america wrote:

I bought a Sansa mp3 player (2 GB Rhapsody) like 9 months ago, while I was still living in the US. Now i came back to europe and my mp3 was working,but few day ago Ive tryed to put some songs on it,and when I turned it on it got frozen- refreshing data base and its not working any more! the batery run out and i pluged it in again-holding the center button! i lost the hardware cd or whatever my computer is asking for and i dont know what to do! we dont have a sansa store or anything like that over here!!!

Sounds like you’re talking about the Sansa Rhapsody, not the Sansa Clip.  If you ARE talking about the Sansa Clip …

 

You probably need to get the latest firmware on your Clip, to keep it from freezing while refreshing the database.

 

In order to do that, you first have to attach your Clip to your PC in MSC mode.  You do this by sliding the hold/power switch down, then pressing in the center button while plugging it in.  You mentioned holding the center button, but not sliding down the hold/power switch.

 

Once you do that, your Clip should show up in My Computer as a removable disk.  See if you can do that, and then write back to let us know how things are going.

Message Edited by PromisedPlanet on 01-29-2008 03:02 PM

Hi. Same problem straight out of the box. My PC (XP SP2) wouldn’t even recognise the device, and, once plugged in, the player itself seemed to freeze solid no matter what I did. Disaster. But then, in desperation, I tried the Mac advice (slide to “Lock” and hold the central button as I plugged it in) - and it solved everything. Very strange, but grateful for the ideas from the forum - wouldn’t have thought of this solution in a million years. Thanks.

Now be sure, if you don’t have firmware version .18 or greater, to upgrade the firmware and then set Settings/USB to MSC (which is what the hold/center button “trick” does temporarily).

Sparklyjumpsuit wrote:

Hi. Same problem straight out of the box. My PC (XP SP2) wouldn’t even recognise the device, and, once plugged in, the player itself seemed to freeze solid no matter what I did. Disaster. But then, in desperation, I tried the Mac advice (slide to “Lock” and hold the central button as I plugged it in) - and it solved everything. Very strange, but grateful for the ideas from the forum - wouldn’t have thought of this solution in a million years. Thanks.

Your Clip is in MTP mode when you buy it; when you did the lock/center button thing, you put it into MSC mode.  So, there’s probably a problem with the MTP installation on your PC.  Try installing/reinstalling WMP11, if you want MTP (which you will if you plan to sync subscription music). 

Message Edited by PromisedPlanet on 01-30-2008 06:36 AM

Thank you for answering!

So I switshed the hold button and plugged it in an everything and the computer recognized it,but there is a window saying :

Found new hardware wizard

If your hardware came with an installation CD or floppy disk please insert it now.

-install the software automatically
-install from a list or a specific location

and i clicked the first one and it said The hardrawe was not installed cause the wizard cannot find the necessary software.
Click back if u have installation media  such as a CD ROM…

what should i do?!?!!?

PLEASE ANSWER ASAP!!!

THANKS IN ADVANCE

I fried a C250 like this and had to return it and get it replaced.  Then hung the new one up as well.  I finally got it to recognize on the mac, reformatted and did a software zone change, then changed it back to original English zone and it is working again.  I am basically afraid to try it again for fear of locking it up again.  I notice that the packaging for the device does not state that it is supported on a Mac. After this I have adopted the policy that if it isn’t supported on the mac platform, I just don’t buy it, even though I also use windows.  If a manufacturer is so short slighted as to not make a usb device support the leading platforms, I just don’t need their products, as eventually I hope to rid myself of the plague called Windows entirely.