Sandisk not working properly at all

I just got this waste of money 2 months ago now, and I purchased a Micro-SD as well for extra space. The last week or so it’s been acting up really badly. Pausing it self every little while, freezing, not turning on (until I hold power for 60 seconds and then it’d work), etc. I decided to reformat it, so I reformatted it and the card that I bought, then proceeded to connect it to the pc again. When I connected it, my card said it had 0 bytes of 0 bytes, so I took out the card.

and now all that happens is this:

I turn it on, says “Sandisk”, immediately goes to flower icon without a delay, and freezes indefinitely. 

I’ve tried:

  • Resetting it by holding the power button for 20-90 seconds
  • Letting it die completely then recharging it
  • Holding power AND middle button, also power and home button

I tried just connecting it to the PC to maybe get it to reformat again, but it isn’t even recognized. Not under device manager either.

I do not know what else I can do. I never installed firmware on it because I didn’t even know firmware was a thing (start adding the firmware installer to the mp3’s instead of your horrible USA-Only Rhapsody, please.

Is there anything I can do? I’m really tired of getting ripped off by these lesser brands.

Have you tried calling SanDisk Tech Support/Customer Service? It may be defective, in which case they would replace it free for you under warranty.

Plus, your player has a 1-year (2 in the EU) warranty–if the player has gone faulty, SanDisk will replace it (and cover postage both ways, in the U.S.).  Best to telephone them, at the above.

So I did e-mail them before posting this topic, though they have yet to respond. I’m hoping to get one soon.

Call, don’t email. It’s much faster.  There’s also a chat option.

Here’s the contact page, including international regions.

http://www.sandisk.com/about-sandisk/contact-us/

BTW, you don’t have to install any firmware. It’s already in there when you get it. There are occasional firmware updates but it will work without them.

And you are not stuck with Rhapsody.  You can just drag-and-drop music (mp3 files)  onto the Clip if you go to Settngs/System Settings/USB Mode and make it MSC. You can also put the card in a card reader and drag-and-drop music onto that.

Since it’s less than a year old, you should easily get it replaced if they can’t help you get it going by phone or chat.

Thanks for the information. I will contact them when I can and hopefully they can help me out. I did buy it on Amazon, however. Amazon says no returns after 30 days so I cannot do it that way. 

I simply meant to do it with a program I’m stuck with Rhapsody. I could manually drag/drop, yes, but it’d be nice to have an iTunes-like interface. That’s neither here nor there, however, as just having it working would be optimal.

Thank you again!

You’re not locked into Rhapsody.

WIndows Media Player works with the Sansa players more or less (often less) the way iTunes works with doPi players.

You need to have WIndows Media Player 10 or above and set the player in Settings/System Settings/USB Mode to MTP.

But that walls you off in the Windows universe.  Better to use a media player that works via MSC mode: Media Monkey or WInamp.

http://www.winamp.com/

http://www.mediamonkey.com/download/

Here are Tapeworm’s how-to’s with Winamp playlists.

http://forums.sandisk.com/t5/Sansa-Fuze/Adding-Playlists/m-p/55917#M40804

The problem with Winamp is that they want you to get the paid version to use it to rip CDs. If you’re just using mp3 files you don’t need the paid version. And to work around that if you are ripping CDs, you can use a free ripper–Windows Media Player, even iTunes–and have it send the files to wherever your WInamp library is, then organize/playlist the ripped files with WInamp.

Media Monkey also wants you to get a paid version to rip .mp3s but they  allow a workaround–put the mp3 encoder in the program folder with Media Monkey. It’s called lame_enc.dll and here are instructions on how to get it.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq_i18n?s=install&i=lame-mp3

Then you replace the lame_enc.dll that’s in the Media Monkey folder–which times out in 30 days–with this one, which is unlimited.

It’s a little bit of extra time–maybe 5 minutes–intially, but both are good music-library software. Rhapsody…not so much.

Perhaps your freezing problems might be due to adding or removing a card while the player is on. The player can get stuck on refreshing media if your tags are the wrong format. The Sandisk players need ID3V2.3 ISO 8859-1 tags.

H buddy, any notes on this yet if you were able to contact support? I just hope that you’re still eligible for an RMA though.

@black_rectangle wrote:

[…]Better to use a media player that works via MSC mode: Media Monkey or WInamp.

In my experience WMP seems to work OK in MSC mode. It will still sync your music to/from your player, in a very similar mannor to MTP. The only thing you will loose is the ability to tranfer DRM files, but DRM ■■■■■ anyway.