sansa express stuttering playback

Hello.  My Sansa Express has been a reliable friend but lately it plays 1-2 seconds and then stalls for 1-2 seconds on a file.  These are simple 96kbps mp3s that have played fine on this unit before.

I have reverted to factory settings, done a hard reset, and reloaded firmware.

Any ideas or a diagnosis?

The genius is the simplicity of this little thing.  I don’t know why the simple USB / drag and drop combo never caught on with manufacturers.

The only thing left to try that you haven’t already is to format the player. Note this will erase the memory so you will have to re-load all your files afterwards.

Is it ALL the files that do this, or the same ones consistently, or does it appear to be random?

It is all the files.  It feels like the onboard memory can’t keep up with the workload.

I guess I thought reloading the firmware constituted a “format.”  I could not find specific formatting steps.

Could you be so kind as to share?

The Express is a really, really old player and any infomation around anymore is sketchy. You should be able to do it in Windows, normally by right-clicking on the player’s icon in Explorer. The player may also have a Format option in the Settings menu.

You may want to try and use the Search function here on the forum, as well as Googling for more tips. :wink:

I think I may just have eked more life out of this comeback kid.  It didn’t come easy.

Format is what had to be done after much legacy driver juggling.

And, it helped to have access to a Windows XP computer.  

My Win 7 box didn’t play ball.

Am I correct that the Express was the only MP3 player ever to offer a direct USB plug?  10+ hours of playback off <1hr direct charge with no cables and drag and drop functionality?  I’m supposed to look at this and choose to install Itunes?  No thank you.

I think I would have just looked for the best deal on a 2 or 4GB Clip if this guy gave up his ghost.  

For a durable no-frills player is that the next step?  The only other Express’s have museum relic prices.

Frankly I only need about 200MB for some low-bitrate football podcasts while I’m running.  

No, the Clip series also have standard USB jacks (mini on the Clip, Clip+; micro on the Zip).