Stuck on "Refreshing your media"

On my 8GB Sansa fuze, every time I turn it on/plug it into my computer, it gets stuck 5/8ths of the way through the “Refreshing your media” phase. I’ve seen other threads with stuff about ID3 tags, but I can’t do anything about that, as the Fuze doesn’t show up on my Ubuntu machine or my Windows XP machine.

I have Rockbox, but I can’t find out how to format it with that, so that’s a no-go.

Please help!

Use the XP box, just to take one more variable out of the picture, and force an MSC connection.

Turn off the Fuze. Hold up the power button for 15-30 seconds, which should be some long seconds after it shuts down, which does a partial reset.

With it still off, slide the power button down to click into Hold position.

Open Windows Explorer (My Computer).

Plug USB into computer.

Hold down << on the wheel. 

Connect the cord to the port. With luck the two drives will pop up in Windows Explorer.

Between Linux and Rockbox, there’s probably some code or file in there that it just can’t handle. If XP does recognize it, right-click on it and Format to FAT32.