8gb Sansa clip won't turn on

I bought it just a month ago and it’s just go dead!  I’m taking it back to get my money back.  It seem like there is a problem with this model.

See this post. Maybe you have the same issue.

And, you didn’t say:  did you try to reset the player?  Try holding the power button down (Clip+) or power slider up (original Clip) for 30 seconds or more (up to a minute or more).

Also, it’s been reported that sometimes the battery needs to fully run down before the player will start up again.  Sometimes just leaving the player alone for a few days, letting the power run out (even if the player is off), can accomplish this.  

This is my second San Disk, and this is a constant repeatable issue. I will NEVER buy again from SanDisk. It always seems to fail when I’ ve charged it and all seems cool…then I go out and I’m have way through my run…and it goes dead.

The second one same same. It may very well restart again after I leave it “useless” for a day or two…but I plan to buy something else and preach how bad these are!!

I bought the Sensa clip a few months ago. Now it seems dead. can I change the battery at all?

@rjacoby wrote:

I bought the Sensa clip a few months ago. Now it seems dead. can I change the battery at all?

No, but it’s doubtful it’s a battery issue anyway. Try resetting it as suggested above.

Has there been any firmware update released to fix this ■■■■ from happening yet?

There hasn’t been any new firmware update for any player from SanDisk for some time, and I don’t expect any in the future. To which “■■■■” are you referring to? :confounded:

I tried holding th power button in for 30 seconds as suggested, still didn’t work, held it in a little longer and it seems to be fine! Thanks.

I have a four-year-old 8 GB Clip with Rockbox on it. It has worked well over the years. Yesterday, I had it hooked to my Mac and was copying some music to it. Partway through that operation, the Mac popped open the dialog box it shows if you unplug a drive, flash drive, etc., without “software-ejecting” it first. But I hadn’t touched it.

Then the Clip wouldn’t turn on. Hooked it to the Mac, hooked it to a linux system, and no response at all. Zero. It didn’t show up in the Mac’s Disk Utility.app or in gparted on the linux system.

I held the power for 30 seconds, 5 minutes, nothing. Dead dead dead.

What I finally did was this: I used a rubber band to hold the power switch in the up position and left it that way overnight. The next day I removed the rubber band and tried to power it up. Nothing. Then I hooked it up to the Mac. The Sansa firmware started loading. (Success!) Unhooked it, rebooted it, and it booted into Rockbox. The battery was at almost zero. So I recharged it and it seems OK now. I put the latest stable version of Rockbox on it.

So that’s one more thing to add to the list of things to do to resurrect a seemingly dead Clip: use a rubber band to hold the power switch up overnight. Note that this left it with almost zero charge when it was at maybe 85% when it went into its coma. So maybe the power switch causes battery discharge. Or maybe whatever little “coma” subroutine it somehow jumped into discharged the battery.

Same problem, won’t t turn on. Used it earlier today, hooked up to my DeWalt radio/charger. Will use it again tomorrow, hooked it up to make certain it was charged. Would not power up. Checked the forum for help, went with holding the power button down for one minute. Unit is a Clip+, about 16 months old. 

It did power up, but not like usual. Now have it hooked to the PC to get it fully charged. Will see it any other problems crop up. Thanks for the tip on holding the power button down. 

Just in case anyone is running into a similiar issue, my Clip+ was also unresponsive. I tried holding the power button down for 15 seconds, then a full minute (at least) but it was still dead. I read somewhere else to try different button combinations. Well, holding down power+the center button (forget now how long I did it for) did the trick. MY CLIP+ LIVES AGAIN!

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@tooolboxx wrote:

It did power up, but not like usual.

After a reset the start will take much longer than usual, that’s normal.

@dcs693 wrote:

Just in case anyone is running into a similiar issue, my Clip+ was also unresponsive. I tried holding the power button down for 15 seconds, then a full minute (at least) but it was still dead. I read somewhere else to try different button combinations. Well, holding down power+the center button (forget now how long I did it for) did the trick. MY CLIP+ LIVES AGAIN!

Thanks for the news–and congratulations!   :slight_smile:

Thanks for sharing that dcs693! I’m sure a of users would find your post helpful in the future.

Success Story in Fixing Frozen ClipZip with Rockbox

The Problem

I accidently d/c’d the clipzip while transferring files and the clipzip threw up an error on the screen. If I tried to power down it just restarted itself and went back to the same screen. It wouldn’t appear in my computer when connected and a soft reset / holding the power button down for 30 seconds did nothing. I couldn’t even boot into the original firmware which you do with a specific button combo which I can’t remember.

The Solution

I can’t be sure whether it was draining the battery or d/c’ing the mico SD card because I did both at the same time. I recommend people try d/c’ing the micro SD card first in future, then if no joy, drain the battery. Looks like all my files are fine  :)

Success Story in Fixing Frozen ClipZip with Rockbox

I appreciate this is a forum for the Clip, but a google search for my clipzip brought this up, and the advice within helped me resolve my problem, so in the interest of helping future Google searchers I’ve included the below…

The Problem

I accidently d/c’d the clipzip while transferring files and the clipzip threw up an error on the screen. If I tried to power down it just restarted itself and went back to the same screen. It wouldn’t appear in my computer when connected and a soft reset / holding the power button down for 30 seconds did nothing. I couldn’t even boot into the original firmware which you do with a specific button combo which I can’t remember.

The Solution

I can’t be sure whether it was draining the battery or d/c’ing the mico SD card because I did both at the same time. I recommend people try d/c’ing the micro SD card first in future, then if no joy, drain the battery completely before recharging & turning back on (No need to fully recharge before turning back on). Looks like all my files are fine  :)

Thanks for the post.  Sometimes a complete battery discharge gets the Clip to re-set, seemingly.  And great that the files are ok, and not totally scambled!    :slight_smile:

Another update - The problem came back but I sorted it.

Posting on the rockbox forum someone suggested the filesystem may be corrupt and to start in bootloader USB mode by holding the select / middle button down when powering on, and then checking the filesystem for errors. I will assume most people know how to do this and so won’t cover it, but if people ask then it’s usually quite simple to explain (just varies on what operating system you use eg. Windows / Linux).

Well just holding the select button down somehow sorted it, I didn’t need to do anything else.