FANTASTIC - THANK YOU GUYS! 
I bought a Fuze yesterday and the volume thing was so annoying and off-putting. The helpline for the chain of stores I bought it from (Currys) were useless - they had no idea what was causing it and simply advised I return it to the shop, an 80 mile round journey for me!
So, thanks to your helpful postings on here, not only have I got the player to work as it should, freed from that stupid EU interference-related firmware update, Currys are now aware of the problem and will, hopefully, mention it to anybody else looking for advice on the matter. @JuliaF - I guess that makes me the second person in the EU to be happy today!
Living in the UK, I always knew that the EU was nothing more than a massive fraudulent operation to implement social control but this MP3/4 volume issue is about as unnecessarily intrusive on a personal level as it can get.
Now that the silly glitch is sorted, the Sansa Fuze seems an excellent device - just what I was looking for to help me escape from another form of global hegemony - the nasty ipod!
What a great resource this forum is, I’m so pleased I found it - thanks again to everybody for the help today.
Message Edited by monopod on 03-22-2010 05:12 AM
