Laptop not recognizing my sansa clip zip?

If you don’t use protected files, and have copies of all your music in your pc, I suggest that you format the player using the player’s menu-settings, system settings, format. This will delete all the songs on the player. Next set usb mode of the player to MSC-settings, system settings, usb mode, MSC. Next reconnect the player. In MSC mode the player acts as a usb flash drive when connected. now you can copy and paste folders of files to the player. 

The buttons on the player are not supposed to be responsive while the player is making a data connection to the pc.