Is my hardware bad? I had this player for about 3 years.
Try manually re-applying the firmware and/or formatting the player. Note that formatting will erase all your content (but not system files or firmware) so you would have to re-load everything you have stored on it afterwards.
It is back in working order after doing nothing. Very strange.
Gremlins again.
Plug player into PC. Use disk manager to format exFat. download firmware and copy to mp3 player unplug and firmware will run done…