I have an older SanDisk Sansa player and it has that annoying “no song” problem where it will say there are no songs and won’t play anything even though the memory is full of songs. I want to replace this with a newer Sansa but I want to know if this problem has been resolved in newer models. Does anyone who has a new Sansa ever have this problem with their device?
@aemorgan wrote:
I have an older SanDisk Sansa player
What player is it?
@aemorgan wrote:
it has that annoying “no song” problem where it will say there are no songs and won’t play anything even though the memory is full of songs.
Do the files have ID3 tags? Are they of the proper format that your player needs them to be in so it can ‘see’ them?
@aemorgan wrote:
I want to replace this with a newer Sansa but I want to know if this problem has been resolved in newer models.
Only if the users have fixed their tags. There is no known issue or problem with SanDisk players themselves, old or new.
@aemorgan wrote:
Does anyone who has a new Sansa ever have this problem with their device?
Yes, and they’re given the same advice. You have to fix/edit your ID3 tags if you want the player to work as it’s designed to.
@tapeworm wrote:
What player is it?
I don’t know - it’s a 2GB Sansa. There aren’t any other markings on it. I’ve had it for years; I can’t remember anything else about it.
Do the files have ID3 tags? Are they of the proper format that your player needs them to be in so it can ‘see’ them?
They’re all MP3s. I think most are tagged but some older ones aren’t.
Yes, and they’re given the same advice. You have to fix/edit your ID3 tags if you want the player to work as it’s designed to.
Is there a minimum requirement of elements that have to be filled in? Is there a way of batch processing MP3s to fix the tags?
There’s a guide on this. Please check. 
Wow, awesome, thank you. I’ll definitely give that a try.
While it may well be possible that some ocmbination of ID tag information might cause a problem, I’ve never had a problem with titles not playing because of lack of same. I do supply tags usin mp3tag, this is so titles can be arranged by album as opposed to all being throw into an ‘unknown’. If the ID tag title field is blank, Sansa will use the file’s filename.
I would look for a file type problem. In any case, the op seems to assume there is some general problem with the original clip, I know of no problem, mine just refused to charge. I got the clip+ before I checked all the reviews. I do see a problem with fm drift (easy to fix), but for that reason I would recommend the clip zip.
To repeat, I do recommend all music be tagged so you have control of it, but I haven’t seen a problem in failing to do so.
I assumed it was a problem with the device itself because I had no idea what else it could be. When I searched online I found other people saying they had the same issue, but no one offering any real advice about it. The biggest problem with the “no song” thing is that when it happens, you have to be at a computer in order to fix it - generally you can just throw another song on it or whatever, just something to make it refresh, and it will work fine again for a while. I’ve reformatted it a bunch of times and that doesn’t seem to make much difference - every so often it will throw the “no song” error. It makes sense that it could be a tagging problem.
Problem - I’m trying to check for errors, but when I right click and go to properties, there is no tab for “tools.” There is just a tab that says “general,” and has things like the name of the device. There aren’t any available actions.
@aemorgan wrote:
Problem - I’m trying to check for errors, but when I right click and go to properties, there is no tab for “tools.” There is just a tab that says “general,” and has things like the name of the device. There aren’t any available actions.
Are you connecting in MSC mode?
