how i borked my sansa clip+

hey, fellas, happy new year!

to make things short, i bought 2 sansa clip+ players: black and white ones. black is dead. white is in a coma – semi-borked – that i wish to breathe life into!

how i borked blacky:

  • blacky is my backup player
  • lent it to a friend
  • friend semi-borked it: device turned on but showed failed dircache something -2 when in rockbox firmware
  • put on my geek coat and tried to fix things by booting to original firmware, uninstalling rockbox, updating to 01.02.16 firmware
  • IT WORKED!!!
  • saw 01.02.18 firmware, updated to 01.02.18 firmware, installed rockbox
  • blacky was buggy
  • decided to uninstall rockbox, updated (or downgraded, whichever you prefer) to 01.02.16 firmware
  • things… went… south…
  • IT DIDN’T BOOT UP!!!
  • tried to reset – nope still dead
  • connected to pc, pc can’t detect player
  • reset player multiple times – still nope
  • connected to pc after letting it rest for a few minutes, PC DETECTED IT!!! as unknown device, “want to format this junk?” “heck yeah i would”
  • pc formated blacky, now, blacky’s new name is m2000plus or something
  • HOW DARE YOU GIVE MY JUNK A NEW NAME!!!@@@
  • apparently, that erased the sansa firmware, which completely rendered blacky useless now – according to google search
  • rip blacky

how i semi-borked whitey:

  • used it for a couple months
  • stopped turning on, one day
  • thought it died
  • turned it on after a couple months – nope
  • connected to pc, IT WAS READ BY MY PC, IT TURNED ON!!!
  • one problem, there’s like lines on the screen, it’s very noticeable when scrolling, and screen is a little dimmer, see pic for details:

s.jpg

can i revive these players without going to a technician? i bought them online knowing none of the stores here carries them. so, going to a technician only semi-crossed my mind. thanks.

Your hope is to reinstall the firmware.

Download the firmware from the sticky at the top of the forum. 

Unzip it on your computer where you can find it. (Desktop?)

Connect USB to computer. 

Open Computer or My Computer (Windows Explorer) 

Hold down the << button.

Connect the cord to the Clip while holding. Two drives, SANSA CLIP and Removable Disc, should show up in Windows Explorer. 

Drag the firmware to the driveletter that says Sansa Clip. Disconnect and hope for the best. 

update:

out of 3 mobile technicians, none of them knows how to fix the black version.

i’m currently using the white version lightly. for now, it’s usable by squinting my eyes and hoping for the best. i’m not touching the firmware yet in hopes it’ll last longer. that being said, thanks for the tutorial, black-rectangle, i’ll look into it when the screen screws itself again.

Nobody fixes these. They are not worth the labor costs.

You could still try sending the firmware over to the black one as long as you can connect to it.Couldn’t hurt since it’s RIP anyway.

http://forums.sandisk.com/t5/User-guides-Firmware-Software/Sansa-Firmware-Thread/td-p/185348

A firmware update can’t hurt the other one either. But if you want to suffer…

Note in my instructions above–you send over the unzipped firmware, not the .zip file.

And the color of the case has nothing to do with what’s inside. They’re all the same. :wink: