Winamp & your Sansa Device (Portable Device support / Auto Terminate / Crash)

MP3 players All other MP3 players
1

Hi all sansa users (particularily express users, where I remember this problem orginating from).

This is in regards to using Winamp and your Sansa Express (or any other Sansa device).

First off, I love Winamp, but I think Winamp has a very confusing media managment when it comes to using media library with portable devices (IMO).  not only do you have a playlist builder, which acted as your music library back when media library was not part of winamp.  Now, with the inclusion of media library, you have literally two seperate media organizer / library usage / player / whatever you want to call it.  I guess it’s winamp’s way of intergrating it’s other features and organizing it all, but I still find it annoying and unnecessary.

anyways, the issue is when you connect your Sansa Express (and I think maybe the clip and other Sansa products), winamp will auto terminate / crash. while the player is pluged in, if you open a song that will auto open winamp to play it, winamp will probably play the file for a few secs and than auto close again.  well here is a work around to it.

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Uninstall “Nullsoft Portable Music Player Support” in the media library plugins and winamp should be fine to play with while a device is connect. you may also uninstall any related or all plugins in the portables section of plugin too.

NOTE:  this removes all winamp abilities and support to manage devices with media library.  so if you were hoping to sync / transfer music using winamp to you portable device, you will not be able to so after you uninstall this plugin.

If your a power user that doesn’t rely on media organizing programs, than this fix would be good for you, as you can finially preview music with winamp before you drag n drop them into your sansa device.

Message Edited by thoma on 01-14-2008 01:43 PM

Message Edited by thoma on 01-14-2008 01:43 PM

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If you want to use winamp to transfer music to your Sansa Express you can set the device to USB Mass Storage Device.

to do this:

  1. Close Winamp

  2. Insert Sansa into USB port

  3. Right click on My Computer and select Manage

  4. Choose Device Manager in the left hand menu

  5. Choose Windows Portable Devices in the right hand menu

  6. Right click on the Sansa Express and select Update Driver

  7. Select “Yes, This time only” and click next

  8. Select “Install from a list or specific location” and click next

  9. Select “Don’t search, I will choose the driver to install” and click next

  10. Verify the “Show compatable hardware” box is checkedl, select USB Mass Storage Device, then click Next

  11. After the driver installs click Finish

  12. Close Computer Management and open Winamp.

  13. You might be prompted for winamp to manage the device, if so select “Yes”.

  14. In the media library the Sansa Express will show up under Portables as USB Drive X: (X being the driver letter assigned to this device)

I performed these steps on 2 different PCs running winamp 5.35 and 5.541 and it worked fine.