stuck on 'refreshing media' / Sansa Fuze 8gb

I have been using my Sansa Fuze with great satisfaction for 6 months now. Not had any big issues.
I just updated the firmware v01.02.26F (this is not the first time I have updated the firmware)

It was then getting stuck on ‘refreshing your media’ after I disconnect it from PC. The device was about 90% full (appox 7,5gb of 8gb in use, only MP3s and a few OGG)
I left if for about an hour, and still it was stuck. I had to hold down the power for 10seconds to reset it. Tried powering up again, and it got stuck ‘refreshing media’.

Once in this state the only way I can get the device to power up is to clear all music off it with Windows Explorer (e.g. via a PC)
I did back up all the music on it to a temp folder on my PC (called ‘temp_music’, so I could easily copy it back later)

I found that if I copy a few tracks over, the device starts up, e.g. it does not get stuck on ‘refreshing media’, But if I try to copy all the music back over from my ‘temp_music’ folder (7,5gb mp3) it gets stuck again (hangs on ‘refreshing media’).

Any ideas what could be causing the device to get stuck? Perhaps a corrupt file? But would a corrupt file really cause the Fuze to get stuck like this?
Is there any way to check if one of my mp3s is corrupt, without having to open (and listen to) all 1500 tracks?

Just to add a bit more info. I have tried to ‘format’ the device via the SanzaFuze menu system > settings > system settings > format > yes. But this did not fix the issue.

Message Edited by andrewaaa5 on 05-19-2009 03:45 AM

Message Edited by andrewaaa5 on 05-19-2009 03:45 AM

Message Edited by andrewaaa5 on 05-20-2009 05:43 AM

@andrewaaa5 wrote:

Any ideas what could be causing the device to get stuck? Perhaps a corrupt file? But would a corrupt file really cause the Fuze to get stuck like this?

Yes

Is there any way to check if one of my mp3s is corrupt, without having to open (and listen to) all 1500 tracks?

Listening might not help - the Fuze can object to what appears to other applications to be a valid file.

You could try reverting to an earlier version of firmware.

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=sansafuse&message.id=26293&query.id=4133#M26293

Otherwise, you are left with doing a binary search - chop your library in 1/2, see which half causes the problem when you load it to the Fuze, repeat until you have found the file. 

Once you’ve found it, if it appears to be a valid MP3 file, it might be worth sending a copy to sansafixto see if Sandisk can fix the issue in a future FW version.

Edit:

Another thing that may be worth trying is to ensure all the tags are ‘nicely’ formatted for the Fuze. MP3tagcan read the tags for all the tracks in your library and change them to the same format in one go. I’d suggest ID3v2.3 using ISO8859-1. Although 01.02.26 is supposed to do ID3v2.4, if you have to revert firmware, you will have to change all the tags to v2.3 anyway. If you choose to do this - I’d try it on a copy of small section of your library first, just in case it goes horribly wrong and you are left with a tag-less library… Statutory notice: Other tag editors are available!

Message Edited by daytona955 on 05-19-2009 12:56 PM

After reading a bit more on another thread, I decided to ‘format’ the device to see if that helped via the following method:

“put device in Lock (slide the Power switch to Hold position). Then as you connect to PC, press and hold the Rewind button.  This will force your Fuze to connect in MSC mode.  It will show up just like a USB drive, so you can right click format it.”

After formatting the Fuze, I added some tracks, refreshed media. They worked ok.
I added some other tracks. They worked ok.
Added a few more. Froze upon ‘refresh media’ << I suspect a problem with some MP3, maybe corrupt.

Ran MP3val and it identified some of my MP3 files have ‘problems’ I have ‘repaired’ them with the application, but still the Fuze gets stuck on refreshing.

In reply to  daytona955 I tried what you suggested, I found some culprits so far in the form of *.ogg files. Does this device support these? I am pretty sure they were working previously.

For now I am thinking of rolling back the firmware. I am going on holiday in 2 days time so do not have much time to test much…

@andrewaaa5 wrote:

In reply to  daytona955 I tried what you suggested, I found some culprits so far in the form of *.ogg files. Does this device support these? I am pretty sure they were working previously.

Yes. OGG is supported. I don’t use it personally, so I can’t really comment on teh Fuze’s reliability with OGG files.  It’s a relatively recent addition (2 FW versions ago). There are some gripes on the forum about it.

I would look at the tags. Mp3tag will edit Vorbis comments. Check for ‘strange’ characters, and maybe try stripping out embedded art, then re-save the tag. See if that  restores one of the problem files to operation…

If that fails, maybe there is a problem with the encoding…

I will have a look at your solutuion later if I get time. Thanks for the tip. All my music is tagged with Jaikoz.

An update from my side: I removedd the *.OGG files and the player now refreshes as it should do and all the tracks play.

Those *.OGG files used to work, so I am assuming it must be the new firmware that I placed on it today that does not agree with my OGG files (??)

Message Edited by andrewaaa5 on 05-19-2009 07:21 AM

@daytona955 wrote:


@andrewaaa5 wrote:

In reply to  daytona955 I tried what you suggested, I found some culprits so far in the form of *.ogg files. Does this device support these? I am pretty sure they were working previously.


Yes. OGG is supported. I don’t use it personally, so I can’t really comment on teh Fuze’s reliability with OGG files.  It’s a relatively recent addition (2 FW versions ago). There are some gripes on the forum about it.

 

I would look at the tags. Mp3tag will edit Vorbis comments. Check for ‘strange’ characters, and maybe try stripping out embedded art, then re-save the tag. See if that  restores one of the problem files to operation…

 

If that fails, maybe there is a problem with the encoding…

As of the latest firmware OGG playback was nearly perfect.

@andrewaaa5 wrote:

All my music is tagged with Jaikoz.

I would give it a go, but it’s £15, and I’ve just been made redundant!!

EasyTAG is my tagger of choice (running in Linux). I use Mp3tag if I am using Windoze.

I have sent a few OGG files that were giving me troubles to Sansafix as suggested.

I am going with the lazy ‘defeatist’ option: Rather than roll-back the firmware or check my tags, I will just rip the affected files from my CDs again to MP3 instead of OGG. There are only 50 affected tracks, so I am rather lucky.

Thanks for all your great assistance.

@andrewaaa5, thanks for the PM, the files also caused freezing during database update on my Fuze.

I did find that if I loaded them into Mp3tag, and saved them again, with no changes to the content, they worked on my Fuze.

So I guess there is something about the way Jaikoz saved the Vorbis Comments that causes the Fuze problems, but that Mp3tag undoes.

Mp3tag doesn’t seem to handle embedded art in OGG, but it doesn’t strip it out either…

Message Edited by daytona955 on 05-20-2009 11:18 AM

Message Edited by daytona955 on 05-20-2009 11:20 AM

Yep, it is weird what is happening with these particular files. They are gone now (beyond my recycle bin :slight_smile: )

For anyone curious of what happened next:

Instaed of ripping the the CDs again, I used Foobar2000 to convert the OGG files to WAV, and then EAC to convert the WAV to MP3, and I did not alter any tags in Jaikoz (or any other program), I just moved them straight over the the Fuze, and the media refreshed perfectly when I disconnected it from my PC.

you wrote “So I guess there is something about the way Jaikoz saved the Vorbis Comments that causes the Fuze problems, but that Mp3tag undoes.”

^^ well, yes, and the firmware seemed to trip something that caused the refresh error. I never had the problem before updating the firmwre yesterday. But still, it is fixed now, in time for my holiday, so I am happy.

I will avoid OGG file format for the time being despite being told they should work fine on the Fuze.

Again, thanks for the assistance in tracking the problem :slight_smile:

Message Edited by andrewaaa5 on 05-20-2009 03:40 AM

Message Edited by andrewaaa5 on 05-20-2009 03:43 AM

I have had this problem too. I found three ogg files with multi-line comments (containing carriage returns) and all was well once I had blanked those tags and copied the files back to the player. Single line Ogg comment tags do not seem to cause problems. This issue could also be caused by the length of the comment rather than the presence of carriage returns.