Fuze Flipped Out--and Fixed

SanDisk MP3 players Sansa® Fuze™
1

OK, it happened to me.

My guesses are that: 1) the 8GB SanDisk MicroSD card had a glitch. This is my prime theory. 

                           2) trying something with MTP mode and WMP for you all, which I never use, left some bad artifact

                         3) I got a bad file on there, even though everything has been run through mp3tag

But it was a serious mess. 

Turn on the unit, and nothing in Artists or Albums except the letter V and the letter F, each of which then listed as [Empty]. 

Tried multiple soft resets (holding the power button 30 seconds)–same result.

Took out the MicroSD card–same result. 

At home with the computer, connected Fuze with MicroSD card out, and saw I could read the albums in the internal memory. Ran ChkDsk/Error-checking just in case. Disconnected, and albums were all listed again correctly.

Inserted MicroSD, and Refresh Database froze. Shutdown, removed MicroSD, the unit itself behaved properly.

Put the MicroSD in a card reader for the computer. At first, it wouldn’t recognize it at all: “Please insert a card.”   Eventually, after putting the MicroSD in and out of the reader and connecting and disconnecting the reader, got the card to show up in My Computer and ran ChkDsk/Error-checking on it. (No messages after checking.) 

MicroSD back in the unit, Refresh Database still froze. 

Card in reader again, the computer wouldn’t read it. Looked in Device Manager to see the computer’s card reader driver (Ricoh) had the yellow exclamation point. Uninstalled it, ran Add New Hardware, it reinstalled. Now it read the card. 

Ran Error-checking again, which took much longer and maxed out the CPU (running at 95-99 percent for nearly an hour). Still no messages after checking. Returned MicroSD to Fuze. Refresh Database still froze.

Format time. Since both internal and external memory were readable, I backed them up onto an external drive. I deleted  an .ini file from Winamp and an .xml file from Windows on the card. 

Formatted internal memory, formatted card, returned the music to each–minus the last five albums added to the MicroSD. Everything running smoothly. Re-added the last five albums. And still running smoothly.

Conclusion: Something happened to that card. Whether it was the settings in those .ini and .xml files. or the flash memory wearing out, I just don’t know. But working methodically, and formatting, fixed it.  

2

When the card has files on it in MTP mode, trying to have the card recognized when in MSC mode or when in a pc card slot may not work. I could understand not having the MTP files on the card accesable when in a pc card slot, but often you can’t even delete the files on the card or format the card in the pc until after the MTP files are gone. To do that, put the player in MTP mode, put the card in the player, then connect. Now the MTP files can be deleted. After that, the card will be recognized in a pc card slot.

3

Sounds plausible, although I didn’t put any files on the card in MTP. 

But there was that mystery .xml file on there, which may have caused the trouble. I might have accessed it with Windows Media Player to tell it not to synch. 

Just one more reason not to bother with MTP. Makes Terrible Problems.