I have an e260v2 that I bought used around 1 1/2 months ago. It’s worked fine for that long. But a couple of days ago I reformatted my PC’s hard drive, and things started going south.
BEFORE ANYONE SAYS IT: Yes, the firmware is up to 3.01.16A
The Sansa didn’t immediately install its drivers when I first connected it after reinstalling Windows. The little Sansa icon never showed up on the taskbar. When I connect it to ANY USB port (hub or otherwise) it doesn’t charge, and nothing shows up on My Computer. No drive or anything. It says Connected on the Sansa itself, though. So I went into the settings and forced it into MSC. It charges, and stuff shows up on My Computer.
Of course, if it had worked, I wouldn’t be here.
Still no drivers installed, but at least it shows up. BUUUUUUUUUUUT…
No syncing; no files in any of the folders; no interface with the computer, basically. Sansa itself works fine, though. Anyone have any idea of what to do?
Your F: Removable Disc drive is the external card slot. This will show in Explorer when you are connected in MSC mode whether there’s a card inserted or not. The fact that you don’t is why you’re getting the ‘inaccessible’ msg.
Looks like you have some pretty serious corruption there. I’d format it to clear it all out and start over.
The only ‘drivers’ it needs are those included as part of Windows Media Player 10 or 11. You may need to re-install this to activate them. But they are only needed if you intend to use MTP mode; like if you want to ‘sync’ your music via WMP. Otherwise it should work just fine in MSC mode; just drag & drop your music files from your My Music folder on your computer to the Music folder on your player.
Like everything doubled up. No folder with a hash or an invalid square character is even accessible. How do I wipe everything? Is there some kind of factory reset function or something? Some way to roll back everything?
Looks like your filesystem is corrupted. Connected in MSC mode, try one of the following methods:
Right click on My Computer and select Manage. Click on the icon Disk Management. Right click on the Sansa in the list in the upper right, or below, and select properties , then select the tools tab. Here we have the Check for errors button.
Or, from a command prompt, once you see the drive letter assigned to the Sansa. Let’s assume it’s “E” for this example. In the Run box, enter cmd. This will open a command prompt box. Then use chkdsk to check the drive.
The command is chkdsk e: /f where " e" is the drive letter, and "/f" is a toggle that tells the utility to fix the errors found.
Used the in-Sansa format (since you asked me how I formatted it), and used it again before posting. Random corrupted files were gone after the second format. Put a song in through MSC, which played fine. Switched it to MTP, turned it off, and turned it back on. Froze halfway through Refresh Database screen. Turned it off, pressed left button with Hold on to force MSC, connected it to PC, and the corrupted files are back. Same weird directories, same random files. Formatted it a couple more times (in Sansa, since after a connection the thing stays on) for the hell of it but MTP still refused to work (charged the Sansa though). Put a different song in through MSC, played fine, changed to MTP and turned it off. Still not detected. After connection I trned it off, and it froze on the boot screen (SanDisk sansa). Turned it to MSC after a while, since actually getting it past the boot screen took a while. O HAY GUYS! Corruption’s back. My Sansa seems to have been posessed by the Governor of Louisiana…
what is this i dont even
Seriously though, what’s wrong with my Sansa? Why is it corrupting everything all of a sudden? Is there anything I can do that doesn’t involve cracking it open?
NOTE: As of this post, I saw someone else posted. This post took forever to make, and I didn’t see it until now. Gonna go ahead and see what he says.
Perhaps, the OS is building those crazy files. Let’s try a few steps:
While connected in MSC mode, delete every file that is preceded with a square character. You should have a correct group of files and folders remaining.
Then download this firmware, 03.01.16a. Unzip the binary file and place it on your desktop. Then drag and drop the e200pa.bin file into the root directory of the Sansa. Don’t drop it into any of teh folders, just place it in the open Windows Explorer window for the Sansa (the root directory).
Then, let’s unplug the Sansa after the transfer: click on the safely remove hardware icon in the system tray first.
The Sansa will display “firmware upgrade in progress”.
Put a song in through MSC, which played fine. Switched it to MTP, turned it off, and turned it back on. Froze halfway through Refresh Database screen. Turned it off, pressed left button with Hold on to force MSC, connected it to PC, and the corrupted files are back. Same weird directories, same random files. Formatted it a couple more times (in Sansa, since after a connection the thing stays on) for the hell of it but MTP still refused to work (charged the Sansa though). Put a different song in through MSC, played fine, changed to MTP and turned it off. Still not detected. After connection I trned it off, and it froze on the boot screen (SanDisk sansa). Turned it to MSC after a while, since actually getting it past the boot screen took a while. O HAY GUYS! Corruption’s back. My Sansa seems to have been posessed by the Governor of Louisiana…
So your problem seems to lie within the MTP mode. MSC appears to work just fine. It’s only after you switch to MTP, then back again to MSC that this occurs, right?
Well, the most simplistic solution would be to leave the player in MSC mode [Patient: “Doctor, it hurts when I do this!” Doctor: “Then don’t do that! That will be $100. Pay the receptionist on your way out.”]. But I know you want to find out the cause, whether you use MTP mode or not. I would. It would bug the b’jeebers outta me.
Since MTP mode uses drivers included in Windows Media Player, what version WMP do you have? It might be worth an upgrade (or re-installation) to WMP 11. You should be able to back off to version 10 if you don’t like it, but check to see if either version solves or triggers your corruption problem.
You can also un-install it in MTP mode in Device Manager and re-install it (be sure to safely dis-connect and re-boot your computer after un-installing). That should force Windows to re-initialize the MTP drivers.
I did something horribly wrong during installation, and my computer corrupted the file system every time I connected the Sansa. I don’t know why it did that, but a fresh install fixed it. Tapeworm was correct: it all had to do with connecting with MTP. And I had to reinstall everything. Without feedback from you guys, I might not have figured out the problem. Thank you for all your help, advice, and patience; all my problems are solved now. MTP works, charging works, and it doesn’t corrupt anymore.
