Ok, so I don’t mean to be melodramatic here, but I’ve completely had it with trying to get my Sansa Express to operate as it should. The feature list is great, the price is fantastic, but the firmware is so completely buggy that I’ve lost all faith in SanDisk’s ability to fix it. I’ve suffered through having the thing lose all of my settings and radio stations about once every three times I plug it into a PC. I’ve had times where I had to power-cycle and soft-reset it three or four times before it would deign to play any of the mp3’s I just put into it. I’ve been aghast to discover that not only would it not read a (Kingston) SD card, it somehow corrupted the card so that none of my other devices could read or format it. And now it’s bricked itself again, and the only known procedure to get it back is to download a driver for a different mp3 player and install that on my PC.
Forget this. Forget you, SanDisk, I’ve wasted too many hours of my life already trying to work around your buggy software. I once owned an e140 and the firmware was almost as bad as this. You can’t even write a shuffle routine correctly! You don’t even bother to include a README or changelog in your firmware updates! I’m done wasting my time and I’ll never buy another SanDisk product again, even if you suddenly decide that Quality Assurance is something it would be worthwhile to invest in.
Frankly the only fix procedure that’s going to satisfy me at this point is to smash the thing into little pieces with a hammer. I couldn’t even sell it in good conscience and inflict this kind of aggravation on someone else. I mean the problem isn’t that it’s impossible to fix when it breaks, it’s that it constantly breaks and requires me to jump through hoops to get it working again.
I feel your pain. Check my posts about the Express.
I have had the e100 series also, but I found the hardware (cheesy clear plastic case to keep the battery cover on, volume wheel fails) was lacking rather than the FW.
Anyway, I recently got a c250 (v1), and so far it is golden after a firmware DOWNGRADE which fixed a problem with the left channel quitting. Go figure. And the battery is replaceable. It also is supported by Rockbox.
I would be all iPOD except for the stupid restrictions of iTUNES. Good luck in any event.
First, did you get the firmware updated to 1.01.05? That fixed a lot of problems, though it still needs work. SD card support was among the fixes.
Second, maybe you just have hardware problems? It happens, and if that’s the case no software will make it work right.
If the different mp3 player you’re talking about is the STMP3600, that is the recovery driver for the device, to let it boot up and format the internal memory. If you got that done, with the current firmware, see if the thing works OK now.
The shuffle works on mine OK, though it would be nice to have it documented as creating a shuffle list, rather than on-the-fly random selection.
I am with the same sentiment !! I have mailed in for a replacement and have had this “new” one about 1 month and its back to the same old problems. Unfortunately, my children received Sandisk clips for Xmas so I can only hope that they are better made. For me, I will certainly buy another brand after my year is up on this one. Any recommendations??
I have read and tried some of the fixes on the site here and so far, this has not worked for me.
I got Clips as well, and haven’t had much problem with them. One we got on Best Buy’s special Friday sale, wouldn’t hold a charge, but we exchanged it and since then it has worked fine. We got five others between then and Christmas, and all work excellently, even with the kids messing with them. No odd shutdowns, lockups, and such (not that any player is immune to this, even iPods, but it is nice not to run into this much).
Overall, I like the Clip better in most things. It lacks a memory slot, display is a little smaller, needs a cable to connect, and it isn’t as shiny as the Express, but I think it is better as a grab-and-go player. The current Clip firmware seems pretty decent, and an update to fix a few issues is expected soon.
The underlying hardware of the Express is about the same as the Clip, so it should be possible to fix it to work as well. Whether Sandisk is putting enough effort into upgrading its firmware, I don’t know, but it definitely still has quirks.
Still, I’m OK with mine so far. 1.01.05 firmware, WMP11, XP/SP2, seems to handle updating it OK (Vista also works).
