Fuze "connected" but not recognized by XP & not charging

[fbtjr1947]

I’ve had my Sansa Fuze 2G since May and it was working OK with my WinXP SP2 notebook. I always use MSC mode and xfer MP3 files/folders directly.  It was connecting (spinning circle and “Connected” on display), being recognized by computer (2 USB mount dings - one for Fuze and one for micro SD), and charging correctly (lightning bolt and battery charged in ~ 2 hours).  First symptom last week was that after a brief period (no more than a minute or two) both “drives” represented by Fuze & SD disappeared accompanied by two dismount dings.  Fuze still showed “Connected” but not charging (no lightning bolt and battery not charged after several hours).  By moving from port to port and/or rebooting I can occasionally get it to MOUNT briefly but it WILL NOT STAY MOUNTED and WILL NOT CHARGE.  It always wakes up and shows “connected”. Same behavior on both of PCs internal USB1 ports used from beginning with no problems.  Same with 4 USB2 ports on PC card also used previously.  I updated to SP3 over the weekend to make sure I had all fixes from Microsoft.  No improvement.  ALL other USB devices work correctly including WiFi adapter, several printers, a flash card reader, several different brands of flash drives, and several external hard drives.  I’m not fond of suggestion to uninstall USB hub given problems encountered by user who followed that suggestion.  Anything reasonable that I should try before taking it back to Best Buy or sending it to SanDisk?