SanDisk Sansa MP3 Players

The current, editable version of this book is available in Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection, at
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/SanDisk_Sansa_MP3_Players

Permission is granted to copy, distribute, and/or modify this document under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

m200

Driver for Linux

Most modern distros support this product right out of the box, as a mass storage device (formatted as vfat). If you are going to use the device from both Linux and Windows, be sure to set your player to USB Mass Storage mode (see Changing USB mode below), or otherwise you may experience that music uploaded from one system will not be accessible from the other.

Music files (mp3 or wav format) may be uploaded to it (in the root folder and in user created folders) and will be found automatically by the player.

It is also possible to upload playlists, as follows:

Upload the music files which will be referenced by the playlist to the player. The advice below suggests placing the music in a "Music"folder, but this does not seem to be necessary.
Create the playlist in your favorite music management program and save is as a M3U file (EXTM3U format).
Edit the M3U file (it is just a text file) to eliminate paths from filenames. That is, a line of the form "/path/to/my_file.mp3" should be replaced by just "my_file.mp3".
Convert the newline format of the M3U file from Unix-style newlines to DOS-style newlines. (There are scripts available to do this, such as 'unix2dos'. Your favorite text-editor may also be able to do this.)
Upload the M3U file to your player. (Again location should not matter.)

Driver for windows 98 and windows ME

SanDisk does not support windows 98 for the m200 series of players, so they will not make a driver available. The e100 series driver does not work.

Refer to a discussion on CNET about the need for a win98 driver, where a working driver can be found. Someone has made a generic driver for USB mass storage device class that works with the m200 series. Both links lead to the same patch.

If you've got a windows 98 language version other than English, or have Windows ME, you may need to read the whole thread. It should be possible to use the driver, but it requires special care. Some sub versions have been made, so read the whole thread.

Changing USB mode

If you want to set your player to USB Mass Storage mode, try this:
Menu button - Settings - USB - MSC
There might be a difference in firmware versions (Europe and USA have different firmware), so check if yours is the same.

The American version (USA) has a higher volume setting and Fm reception while the E(Europe version) Has no Fm reception and has a volume Cap On It.

Playlist creation

There's a post on the Post No Bills blog with a response from Sandisk about how you can create playlists.

One approach is to put all the MP3 files in one directory (Music), and create playlists that refer to those files.

The problem is that one directory is hard to maintain when you want to find files and delete them. The m200 firmware is able to read mp3 ID3 tags versions 1 and 2, including the track number field. For best results, you should use mp3 ID3 tags version 2 and use the track number field, so the original track order is preserved.

Solution 1

In the Sansa drive in Windows Explorer select the songs that you want in the playlist. Right click and create playlist. You can do minimal playlist editing through the playlist file properties. Drag files to the references tab to add files.

There is a free playlist creator which creates playlists for each folder on the sansa player with one click. it is written in .NET and does not alter the music files (http://www.infosys.tuwien.ac.at/staff/cp/playlist_creator.zip).

There is also one written in Python that should work on both linux and Windows (http://people.ifm.liu.se/yohell/make_playlists.py).

Solution 2

Try Musicmatch Jukebox or MediaMonkey. Both of those should be able to create a music library using only files from the device. Then sort them by artist and album, and delete them from the library, deleting the files as well. Transfer new files to the device as files (MSC USB mode on the player), not by syncing. You can create a new music library on the fly if you've made extensive changes. It doesn't take much time. Playlists should not contain drive letters or folder names, so edit them in Notepad, unless you have an app that makes them on the fly (suggestions?).

You can keep your main database in MediaMonkey, and open the Sansa device (see the plus and click on it). You'll be able to delete files from there. But if you double click on a song on the Sansa device, the wrong song will play. Dunno why, but that's what happens on my computer. But deleting files works.

Solution 3

Rename all your tracks so artist (look for batch renaming feature in your software. Add example of freeware editor?), album and song name is in the file name. That won't be visible in the player, but can aid administration if you use the player in MSC mode.

Solution 4

A how-to for using Windows Media Player and syncing to make playlists can be found here.

Solution 5

The following solution appears to allow you to create an extended m3u (EXTM3U) playlist file using Windows Media 9 and allows you to keep album directories. It is unclear what the maximum file and folder count are on this device.

SanDisk m200 is set to auto-detect USB mode (MTP). Also tested and verified on m250.
Create the "MUSIC" directory on the SanDisk m200, if it's not already there.
Copy all music files and their respective album directories into the "MUSIC" directory of the device.
Run Windows Media 9. Click on Media Library on the left navigation. Click on the album node in the left window pane. Click on the Add button near the top of the application window and then click "add from directory" from the resulting menu. You are going to add albums to your computer's Media Library from your m200. Do not load files from your computer. Add each directory you want to the Media Library. They will appear as albums in the left window pane. Windows Media 9 will find all the files within that directory.
Click on the Playlist node in left window pane. Click the Playlists button near the top of the application window and create a new playlist.
Now click on the album you want in the left window pane. You will see the files belonging to that album in the right window pane. Drag and drop the file from the right window pane over to the playlist. That will add the file to the playlist. Keep doing this until you have the files you want.
When you are done, click on the playlist to highlight it. Then, click File menu and click the Save Playlist As option. Save the playlist to the m200 in the "MUSIC" directory as a m3u playlist (you will need to change the filetype dropdown in the Save File Dialog window). Windows Media Player 9 will save as an EXTM3U file.
This m3u playlist is a text file that you can view in a text editor if you want to check if the files are listed correctly.
Disconnect the m200 from the computer. The m200 will rebuild its internal database.
Go through the m200 menus and select the Play Music menu. Then, pick the Playlists option. You should see your playlist.

You can add more playlists to the m200, and they will show up individually. This will allow you to make multiple playlists to suit the occasion.

Note: The m200 does not seem to recognize the regular M3U format. The music library software must be able to save playlists as EXTM3U format. It may be possible to use another program besides Windows Media Player to create playlists. One popular program is Winamp, which creates correct playlists based on the saving directory (saving the playlist directly onto the Sansa device will give correct track paths).

Solution 6

Use Winamp. Select SanDisk m200 on left pane of Media Library under Portables. Then select the songs in the media library which you want on the playlist. Right click to save the playlist.

Connect Sansa in mtp mode
Copy all the mp3 files in any subfolder of 'music' folder of sansa say 'rock' subfolder created by you.
After all mp3 files are copied, select all these by pressing shift key and highlighting the icons.
Once all selected,finally right click- you will get option of create playlist—that's it! You can create and rename playlist as you like. But you have to have winamp 5.5 installed on your PC.

Solution 7

An MSC format playlist editing trick:
The m3u format that works for me is very simple:

#EXTM3U

1st_song.mp3

2nd_song.mp3

3rd_song.mp3

etc.

Note that there must be a blank line after each song. Note that there must be two blank lines after the EXTM3U line. Also note that the folder/path names must not be included in the file name. The sansa will automatically search through all the folders and find the file names.

Copy the playlist to the top folder/directory of the player (MSC format) (or into the album's folder).

A big benefit of playlists for me is that songs will play in the order specified in the playlist (unless shuffle is on)!

Use a standard text editor like Notepad. If you use custom text editors, make sure they save in LF/CR (DOS) format.

Note 1: If the filename has only numbers in it (eg. 40.mp3), the playlist will cut off at that song. Rename the file to begin with a letter (eg. forty.mp3) and update the playlist.

Note 2: If the Sansa has a problem with the playlist, it will stop reading it in, but will remember all the songs right up to where it found a problem (got confused). Use this knowledge to view the playlist on the Sansa and quickly track down the problem song and fix it in the playlist (this is how I discovered Note 1 above).

Solution 8

A playlist editor that lets you actually create the list and name it. Written in Win32 C++. Only been tested in MSC mode. NOTE: You need to have the folder 'Playlists' in the same folder as your music folder.[1]

Solution 9

This one is the most easy and most reliable. A Program that creates Playlists from the directory structure of your mp3 player, without fiddling around wit all that stupid media player stuff...

Download it at http://web.archive.org/web/20070304144931/http://www.infosys.tuwien.ac.at/Staff/cp/playlist_creator.zip if you want, its free ;-)

Solution 10

I wrote a little .net program to make it easy to create playlists for your sansa. Creates playlists in the same way as playlist_creator above, but allows you to choose what songs go in a playlist, their order, etc. Currently only works in MSC mode, but I'm working on adding MTP support. The program is here http://www.randomphotos.org/SansaPlaylists.zip , and the source is here http://www.randomphotos.org/SansaPlaylists_source.zip.

Solution 11

Place the following script into the root directory of the Sansa player, and run it (i.e. double-click it). Bash is included in OS X and nearly every flavor of Linux. For Windows, you'll need bash, find, sort, and a few others. It would be best to install Cygwin or use one of the other methods above (or switch to a Unix-like OS).

#!/bin/bash

# Written by Jason Gyorog
# Place this script on the device, at the root level.
# Any directories with mp3 files will have playlists created.

cd "`dirname "$0"`" # Set working directory to script directory.

find * -type d -depth 0 | while read DIR; do
        find "$DIR" -iname [^.]*.mp3 | sort | while read TRACK; do
                basename "$TRACK"
        done > playlist.temp

        if [ -s playlist.temp ]; then
                echo -e "#EXTM3U\r\n\r" > "$DIR".m3u
                while read TRACK; do
                        echo -e "\r\n$TRACK\r" >> "$DIR".m3u
                done < playlist.temp
        fi
done

rm playlist.temp

Alternative to playlists

Some prefer to use custom genres in the ID3 tag to create mixes for workout, relaxation or other moods. It's more flexible than playlists and easier to add to. This should work with the e100 series as well, but it's reportedly buggy in that respect.

Playing tracks in order

The m200 series rely on ID3 (Version 1) tags for sorting songs. Most people hit Play All when they've chosen an album. If you do that, the songs will play in alphabetical order. But if you want to play the songs in track order, scroll down to the first song and hit play instead. Make sure shuffle is off. The m200 series was previously believed to not be track tag aware. Thanks to Chip_Leader for the solution.

The m240 (latest firmware) is track tag aware and should play album tracks in track order. However it will ignore both v2 and v1 if any of the MP3s in the Album list have invalid characters in the track tag. The tag must be numeric. For example, if you choose the "Track X of X" option when tagging in ID3TagIt, the software will enter "1/12" for the first track of twelve into the MP3 track tag. The Sansa will ignore this tag because of the "/" and will sort by track name instead, even if the v1 ID3 tag has a valid value in it and even if only one MP3 in the list has an invalid character in the track tag.

Alternatively, use a playlist. If shuffle is off, playlists will play in order.

Audio Books

Extra care should be given when using Audio Books, since chapters could easily play out of sequence. Batch rename the ID3 tags for song title to reflect the numbers from the file name, or create playlists. Some use several folders (directories) for easier administration of audio books, and batch rename. I'd actually consider using something like Mp3splt to split into smaller files, if you go back and forth between music and audio books. Audio book files are often way too long.

File limits

The FAT files system used has some file limits. One report appears to say that the limit is 130-140 files in the root directory.

Unknown Album and or Unknown Artist

There is a known issue regarding these players’ tendency to display “unknown artist” or “unknown album” even when Windows Explorer, or Media Player clearly reflect the correct artist and or album of a particular song when the unit is connected via the USB port. This issue appears to occur randomly and even the most recent beta firmware (version 2.2.5) has not resolved it.

See these threads. CNET MP3 players Forums Ecoustics.com/bbs/messages

Workaround in this thread: http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/15118/209222.html

This issue is actually related to the number of files stored on the device. When using MSC mode every 100'th file uploaded to the device will appear as unknown artist. This appears to be some sort of off by one error in either the ID3 parsing routine or the database creation routine. Breaking large groups of files across multiple directories does not appear to solve this problem.

There is also an issue with the order in which WMP11 (and other converters?) stores the tags when converting from MP3. The version one M200 (and maybe others?) can't read the artist or title tags unless they come before all others as they are in a different format from all other tags except the comment tag. See this thread in the SanDisk user forum.

Comparing carefully files with a tag editor (I use Mp3tag) that came up as "unknown" and ones that came up correctly I found that all the files in the "Unknown" category had data in the "Album Artist" field and the ones that displayed correctly did not. I deleted the data in the "Album Artist" field and reloaded the files onto my player an they all appeared correctly after that.

Hidden files

A directory with the name "radio" seems to have some special significance. Files placed in a directory with such a name are not indexed by (or hidden from) the player.

e200

This is a good place for adding tips, tricks, bugs and experiences which would help other owners of players in the Sandisk Sansa e200 series, which consists of:

Sansa e250 - 2 gig
Sansa e260 - 4 gig
Sansa e270 - 6 gig
Sansa e280 - 8 gig

SanDisk was the first manufacturer to release an 8 gig flash mp3 player. Sandisk released the e280 model on August 21, 2006.

In addition, you can add microSD cards, and the battery is user exchangeable.

Tips and Tricks

Blue Wheel on, Screen off

If your blue wheel is on, and the screen does not "power on" then hold down the menu button on the front bottom left of the player for about 30 seconds. After 15 the blue wheel will power off, but keep the button pressed down. This allows for a reboot.

Recovery Mode

I was having a problem with my player and after a little back and forth they showed me a back door to recover the system:

If your Player wants you to start in recovery mode

1. Activate the "HOLD" function 2. Press "Rec" and hold, while ath the same time pressing "ON/OFF" button and hold.

After some seconds of pressing there appears a screen reading: Recovery mode: Connect cable Now connect to your PC. A folder 16mbFORMAT will appear under 'My Computer'. Call SanDisk technical support for the most up to date firmware files. 1-866-SanDisk

Note: The firmware is available online via links in their forum at http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/

There are currently 2 version of the e200s, make sure you get the proper firmware for your version.

Copy the .MI4 file from the zip to the 16mbFORMAT folder.

The one thing not mentioned is to format the device completely, create a new directory called "sansa.fmt" in the 16mbFORMAT folder. Then, unplug the USB cable from your computer. Powering down will not reformat.

Playback in Correct Order

Filenames don't matter in playback. ONLY proper ID3/MP3 tags do. Your files may appear incorrectly because of this. Use one of the utilities listed below to correctly format the ID3/MP3 tags.

There are bugs where albums don't always play in the correct order. The first thing you should is download the latest firmware version from Sansa using their firmware updater program available on the site. The latest version should solve this quite easily.

If all else fails, then edit ID3 tags so that the track numbers contain a leading zero. MP3Tag (freeware) and ID3 Tag Editor (freeware) work well for this.

Change Video Quality

If you want to change the quality of the converted videos (results in smaller size), go to the folder Programs Files → Sandisk → Sansa Media Converter → Profiles, then open the arp file (SanDisk_E200_MSC.apr) in WordPad or Notepad, go to the optimize section and you can change the quality via video quality. I changed mine from 70 to 30 and it keeps the file about the same size, also you can change the converter from capping it off at 10 minutes, go to split time and change it from 600 (goes by seconds so 600 is 10 minutes) to something like 20,000 and that should do it.

Alternative charging methods

Sandisk only provides a USB cable for charging the battery. But if you've got a powered USB hub, it's reported to charge the player. Devices that also send power to its USB but not data (for example, the Xbox 360 and the Playstations 2 and 3, when not employing eyeToy extensions) will charge but not use the 'Connected' dialog. Also any wall adapter to USB (i.e. iPod charger) or any after market adaptations work well too. The Made for Sansa product line sells a SanDisk certified model of this

Note: You can't listen to/play media while the Sansa is plugged into the USB hub on computers. You can, however, on some other chargers. There are several after market products, such as wall and car chargers, that will.

Play folders and create playlists

Per default, the e200 series does not provide a feature to simply play a single folder of the player's directory structure. This can be useful if the soundfiles do not have correct ID3 tags or a large number of Files is stored on the player. However, there is a free playlist creator which creates playlists for each folder on the sansa player with one click. it is written in .NET and does not alter the music files (http://www.infosys.tuwien.ac.at/staff/cp/playlist_creator.zip).

Driver for Windows 98

Sandisk does not support Windows 98 for the e200 series of players, so they will not make a driver available. The e100 series driver does not work.

There is an independent driver for m200 series in MSC mode http://www.98-drivers.com/sandisk.html There is also a free generic USB mass storage driver here: http://www.technical-assistance.co.uk/kb/usbmsd98.php

Fill Device Automatically in Windows Media Player + Create instant playlists for transfer

Peter Gabriel's latest digital venture 'The Filter' have recently released a Windows Media Player and Sansa. This software makes updating your Sansa a very simple process - all you need to do is select a song that you like and a playlist will be instantly generated. This playlist will automatically updated with new songs when you reconnect your device. It is a free download. (http://www.thefilter.com/download.aspx?platform=Windows).

Linux Tips

The Sansa E series players (and the Sansa Express) work well under Linux. There are some "gotchas", however:

Mode The Sansa's operate in "MSC" mode under Linux. This is not the default mode for the player. You must change the USB mode, the last menu item under the "Settings->USB" menu, to MSC.
Sync After writing files to the Sansa, you should issue a manual "sync" command, then unmount the device.
Important The database which stores all of the track info does not automatically update when the USB storage device is ejected. After adding music to your Sansa you must delete the database directory. When you restart your player the database will be recreated properly.
Playlist creation You can upload custom playlist into PLAYLISTS folder in the device. Playlist is in PLP format with .pla suffix, UTF-16LE encoded. Here is very simple Linux shell script, converting M3U to PLA. Also, see (referenced by parent links below) Linux Playlist utils.
More to come...

Themes

The firmware inside the e200 series can be modified with H3 Mod to customize menu and user interface of the Sansa. Also called "Themeing", these Photoshop artistes create vivid and interesting themes, see Other Links.

Bugs

Song tags in MSC mode

If you update the tags on your songs and then transfer the files to the player, the database still shows the old tags. Removing the songs, refreshing the database and then reuploading the songs works. You can also remove the database file System\Data\Pp5000.dat. But some songs still have screwy tags on the E270, even after MediaMonkey shows correct tags on the computer. And some songs won't show the correct genre, no matter what you do. The genre will show as unknown. To fix that, remove the ID3v1 tags and use ID3v2.3 tags (not 2.4). Linux users may find that the Sansa can't read tags written by their computer, even ID3v2.3 tags. The tagging program eyed3 has been known to write Sansa-friendly tags in Linux when converting v1 tags to v2.3.

Deleting database deletes list of Top Rated Songs

This isn't really a bug, just something to keep in mind. When you rate a song, the song file isn't changed, only the database on the player pertaining to that song. So when you delete the database (needed sometimes), you also lose all rating of songs.

System noise between tracks

Some owners report a system noise between tracks. The noise is the same audio level, independently of the volume setting, so usually only heard during gaps in the playback or at low volume levels. The system noise is supposedly less noticeable with newer firmwares. Some owners say it's still the same even after upgrade. Some say certain earbuds are more susceptible (low impedance, high sensitivity) to the noise than others.

MCDI header hides genre

Problem: when an MCDI header (Music CD identifier) is included in the ID3v2 tag, the software fails to read the track's genre information. Solution: remove the MCDI header (for example using ID3-TagIT). Note: make sure you refresh the tag database.

Reviews

e200r

This page was created by someone who considered the Rhapsody version of the E200 series as a different player. There are differences, but a lot of the features are identical with this player:

e200 series

Here's a review of the Rhapsody version: Cnet

Here is a listing of the key additional features of the E200R:

Built in Rhapsody channels

support for additional codecs acc,real,

Antialiased fonts

c100

This is a good place for adding tips, tricks, bugs and experiences which would help other owners of players in the SanDisk Sansa c100 series, which consists of:

Sansa c140 - 1 gig
Sansa c150 - 2 gig

While both the European and the American models of these players (for either c140 or c150) feature exactly the same hardware, the wireless, some recording functions and extra high volume settings are sadly disabled in the euro-firmware. In order to enable this functionality you may download and install the American firmware (see the links section, use at your own risk).

Operating systems

Windows

In Windows, the default setting is to use "MTP". In practice, this means you need to have installed the relevant software (Windows Media Player 10). If you don't want to do this, or are using a different computer which doesn't have the software installed, then you can use it in "MSC" mode, and as described below.

Other operating systems

The c100 series can be used as a USB mass storage device. The computer treats it as another hard drive, and you can drag and drop files into the SanDisk player (or copy and paste). This makes it compatible with any standard operating system, including Windows, Mac or Linux.

To use it in this mode, it should be set to MSC, under Settings>USB>MSC. (Auto-detect should make this unnecessary in theory, but it may not work properly).

How to transfer playlists

A method that involves clearing the player's contents

Follow these instructions, and it should work for you.

Delete all the music on the Sansa (which should be located in the "...media/music/" directory). Also, delete the "WMPinfo.xml" file in the "...media/" directory (if there is one).
Create a playlist or multiple playlists (.m3u) on Winamp, or some other mp3 playing program.
Start-up Windows Media Player. Since you have deleted all the music on the Sansa, including the "WMPinfo.xml" file, Windows Media Player will "think" that it is the first time you have connected the device
Press the "Set Up Sync" button at the top of the Windows Media Player window. A prompt should appear, asking you if you want to set up your walkman "automatically" or "manually". Select "Manually"

and press "Finish".

To get your custom playlist(s) (the one(s) you just made) to appear in WMP's list of selectable playlists (you will see this list of selectable playlists in step 7), locate the ".m3u" file(s) you just created. Drag and drop it/them into the main window of Windows Media Player. Press the "Start Sync" button. It will give you the following error: "Error: Windows Media Player cannot synchronize the file. The Player might not support the file type."

This is okay, since the only reason we were doing this was to get your playlist to appear in WMP's list of playlists.

The following steps (a-d) are optional steps you might wish to take before continuing to step 6: I've noticed that WMP tries to convert some files on its own as it transfers them. Why? I do not know. And sometimes, WMP will say that it cannot transfer a given file because the file is not supported, even if you know for a fact that you are transferring a file that you know is just an mp3. So...to get around this, after completing step 5:

a.) In the top of the Windows Media Player window, there is a bar that says "Windows Media Player" with the Windows logo to the left of it. Right click it. Go to "Tools->Options".

b.) Select the tab that says "Devices". Your Sansa player should be in the list. Highlight it (by clicking on it), and press the "Properties" button.

c.) Now, there should be two tabs; one that says "Synchronize" and another that says "Quality". Click the "Quality" tab, and uncheck the box that says "Convert files as required by the device (recommended)". A warning will appear asking you if you are sure you want to uncheck the box and you "wish to continue". Click "Yes".

d.) Then click on the "OK" button on the "Sansa c140 Properties" window, and "OK" on the "Options" window. Now...you can proceed to step 6.

6.) Now, press the "Set up Sync" again. A window will appear that says "Synchronization Settings" at the top. Check the box that says "Synchronize device automatically".

7.) Once checked, you will have the ability of checking each of the playlists listed in the window that you want to send to your device. Most of them are playlists that are automatically generated by Windows Media Player based upon your listening habits while listening to your music on Windows Media player. The playlist you created earlier will be in the list. Check the box next to it. Make sure there are no other boxes checked...except for the playlist that you want to send. Note: YOU CAN DO THIS FOR AS MANY PLAYLISTS AS YOU WANT.

8.) Press the "OK" button and...voila! Your music starts to transfer to your device, from the playlist you generated.

When the player is done transferring, even though there will not be any playlist(s) file(s) in the "...Media/Playlists" directory (when navigating via Windows Explorer), when you disconnect the player, and you navigate, via the player's on-screen menu, to "Music -> Playlists", your playlist(s) will appear beneath the "Go List" that is already on the player.

An easier way than wiping out your player and using WMP

Use the Rapsody music management software. On the window to the left that shows devices/drives as well as playlists, you may drag & drop a playlist into the c140. When you unplug your device and navigate, the list will show up in the Playlist menu beneath the "go list."

A way that doesn't require Rhapsody

If you set your Sansa up as an MSC device (it's in the settings menu under "USB"), there's an even easier way. Copy your music to a folder in the Sansa, then the files to an M3U playlist in Winamp (or another music player which supports M3U- nearly all do) and save the M3U playlist to the same folder on your Sansa. In other words:

Drag & drop music to your Sansa.
Open up Winamp. Drag & drop your music ON THE SANSA into Winamp's playlist.
Click List Opts (lower right corner of the playlist), then "Save List".
Save the list in the folder on your Sansa that you drag & dropped the music into. Make sure you save it as an M3U playlist, not PLS or M3U-8 (Unicode).
Unhook and enjoy. Your playlist will now be in the "Playlists" menu.

Troubleshooting

Player hangs on startup, no keys work

Try these in order until you get one that works: (when instructions call for RESET, hold down the power button for 20 seconds)

RESET
Remove the battery, RESET, replace the battery
Remove the battery and replace it in the player BACKWARDS, RESET, put the battery back in correctly
Use the Recovery Tool to perform a firmware update (NOTE: this will clear the contents of your player)
1. Download the Firmware Update found at the end of this page
2. Unrar the file
3. Carefully read and follow the howto.txt file

External links

Reviews:

Anything But Ipod c100 review

Firmware updates

American firmware for SanDisk Sansa c100 — v1.0.0.5a

e100

Unknown artist, unknown album

Some have complained of lots of songs having unknown artist and unknown album. That problem has been tentatively tracked down to a USB cable that truncates the files. Since the ID3 tags are at the end of the files, those could easily be missing if the last 1Kb of the file is truncated. Try another cable, and see if that fixes the problem.

SanDisk Sansa MP3 Players/Printable version