MP3 player problems

[granjan]

I bought my 3 grandsons SanDisk digital audio players for Christmas and they
immediately tried to transfer music to them from my computer. We tried 2 of
the 3 and neither would work, so I tried on another computer and they work
perfectly. I hope somebody can tell me what my computer is missing or what
is wrong. I have a 6-mo. old Dell Dimension 8400 with XP Media Center
Edition. I have MusicMatch 10 and Windows Media Player 10 installed but
neither works with the MP3 players. In order for my computer to even
recognize the players, I have to connect them to the usb port and reboot.
Then I can go thru the motions of transferring music and it looks like it's
working, but when it is finished there is no music on the mp3 player. This
sounds like a problem with my usb but I have a printer, dsl modem, camera,
etc. connected thru usb and have no problems with any of those things. I
tried 5 different usb ports (I have 8). Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Janice

 

[Galen]

In granjan <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

I bought my 3 grandsons SanDisk digital audio players for Christmas
and they immediately tried to transfer music to them from my
computer. We tried 2 of the 3 and neither would work, so I tried on
another computer and they work perfectly. I hope somebody can tell
me what my computer is missing or what is wrong. I have a 6-mo. old
Dell Dimension 8400 with XP Media Center Edition. I have MusicMatch
10 and Windows Media Player 10 installed but neither works with the
MP3 players. In order for my computer to even recognize the players,
I have to connect them to the usb port and reboot. Then I can go thru
the motions of transferring music and it looks like it's working, but
when it is finished there is no music on the mp3 player. This sounds
like a problem with my usb but I have a printer, dsl modem, camera,
etc. connected thru usb and have no problems with any of those
things. I tried 5 different usb ports (I have 8). Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Janice

When you insert the USB cord (from the MP3) player there should be a drive
that appears in "My Computer" and from there you can *usually* just
copy/paste your MP3 files into there. If the MP3 players came with software
than you might need to install that in order to use it with full
functionality.

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind,
which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply
there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations." -
Sherlock Holmes

 

[granjan]

Thanks for your reply Galen, but no drive shows up unless I reboot first.
Then if I drag & drop files to the drive they won't play on the player. It
appears that they are playing, but you can't hear anything.
When I connected the player to another computer it worked just like it's
supposed to...just not on my computer.

 

[Galen]

In granjan <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Thanks for your reply Galen, but no drive shows up unless I reboot
first. Then if I drag & drop files to the drive they won't play on
the player. It appears that they are playing, but you can't hear
anything. When I connected the player to another computer it worked just
like
it's supposed to...just not on my computer.

Janice,

No worries, I like the more problematic troubles. They give me something to
think about.

Anyhow, let's start at the differences. What's the differences between the
two PCs that you're using? The working one (for this MP3 player problem) is
what OS? They show up normally and all? You mentioned having a lot of USB
devices plugged in - is it possible, probable, or even likely that something
there is amiss? How about if you unplug any one of those devices and plug
the device into a USB slot that you know is good. Is there any difference?

Did they come with any software? I don't have your particular brand I'm
afraid so I have no idea what they come with. Have you looked at their site
or considered what they might have for support options? They might know
something specific about their brand of software that we aren't aware of.

I'm happy to walk through it and see if I can find an answer for you. This
is, well, what I do to keep myself occupied mostly.

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind,
which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply
there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations." -
Sherlock Holmes

 

[bill]

I bought my 3 grandsons SanDisk digital audio players for Christmas and
they immediately tried to transfer music to them from my computer. We
tried 2 of the 3 and neither would work, so I tried on another computer and
they work perfectly. I hope somebody can tell me what my computer is
missing or what is wrong. I have a 6-mo. old Dell Dimension 8400 with XP
Media Center Edition. I have MusicMatch 10 and Windows Media Player 10
installed but neither works with the MP3 players. In order for my computer
to even recognize the players, I have to connect them to the usb port and
reboot. Then I can go thru the motions of transferring music and it looks
like it's working, but when it is finished there is no music on the mp3
player. This sounds like a problem with my usb but I have a printer, dsl
modem, camera, etc. connected thru usb and have no problems with any of
those things. I tried 5 different usb ports (I have 8). Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Janice

I bot a San DisK also, circa $100, instructions look simple, copy and paste,
etc., after phone calls for help to India and Calif., no luck. Problem is
various music players, ITunes, etc. have different MP3 files and wont copy,
like Real Player and Media Player problems. You have to find a match to the
player where your music is stored I guess. I returned my to Best Buy for
full refund.

bw

 

[granjan]

Galen,
Thanks for trying to help. I hope I answer all your questions here, but if
you need more info let me know.


"Anyhow, let's start at the differences. What's the differences between the
two PCs that you're using? The working one (for this MP3 player problem) is
what OS? They show up normally and all?"

Mine is Dell Dimension8400, 6 mos. old running WinXP Media Center Edition.
My daughter's is Dell XPS with windows XP Home, about 2 yrs old. On hers,
everything worked without a hitch using Windows Media Player 10. Music
copied to digital player and played fine.

"How about if you unplug any one of those devices and plug
the device into a USB slot that you know is good. Is there any difference?"

No difference

They came with a cd containing Musicmatch, user guide, and driver for
Windows 98SE only. It says "no driver required for other supported operating
systems".

I left a detailed message on the Sandisk support site, but haven't heard
from them. It's been 3 days now. I also posted on the Dell Community
forum, but no answers there either, just replies from people with the same
problem looking for answers.

I have tried dragging and dropping music files using Explorer and get error
message: Cannot copy (filename): cannot find the specified file....
Just don't make sense to me. I have a 256 mb flash drive that I use all the
time for backing up some files and it works just fine. Hope you can come up
with something.
Janice

 

[granjan]

Just for the heck of it I tried to drag & drop a music file to my flash
drive and it said it could'nt copy the file...the path was too deep. I
haven't had any problems with my Money backup files and some other files
either. So could there be something wrong with the path? All my music
files are in My Documents/My Music.
Just a thought.
Janice

 

[Galen]

In granjan <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Just for the heck of it I tried to drag & drop a music file to my
flash drive and it said it could'nt copy the file...the path was too
deep. I haven't had any problems with my Money backup files and some
other files either. So could there be something wrong with the path?
All my music files are in My Documents/My Music.
Just a thought.
Janice

256 character limit maybe??? Just out of curiousity...

Open My Computer (I don't use MCE so you'll have to break out of that on
your own to get there.)
Make a new folder called... Oh... "Stuff"
(No quotes of course)
Plop a copy (no moving JUST yet) of an MP3 into that folder
Then try dragging it...

Does that do the trick???

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind,
which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply
there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations." -
Sherlock Holmes

 

[granjan]

I set up a file on my desktop and copied an mp3 file to it. I could not
drag & drop to the mp3 player, but I did manage to COPY that 1 file to it
and it played just fine. Then I tried to copy a sub-folder
(Santana_supernatural) to the device and it bombed out. Now I can't get my
computer to recognize the player at all...I've tried rebooting with it
connected but it doesn't work now. It just locks up the computer.
I am getting very frustrated. This shouldn't be happening on a new
computer. Any more suggestions?

 

[Galen]

In granjan <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

I set up a file on my desktop and copied an mp3 file to it. I could
not drag & drop to the mp3 player, but I did manage to COPY that 1
file to it and it played just fine. Then I tried to copy a sub-folder
(Santana_supernatural) to the device and it bombed out. Now I can't
get my computer to recognize the player at all...I've tried rebooting
with it connected but it doesn't work now. It just locks up the
computer. I am getting very frustrated. This shouldn't be happening on a
new
computer. Any more suggestions?

Sure, loads of 'em. <g> Most of them involve kicking it though. I'm guessing
that, at this point, you've corrupted it... Moving the whole folder there is
probably not going to work and now it's full of bad data that it can't read.
Load it, right click it, and select format. I don't know but I suspect that
your MP3 player won't support folders? Try to copy just the files themselves
to it if you've been trying to move whole folders.

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind,
which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply
there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations." -
Sherlock Holmes

 

[Guest]

I am having a simular problem with my daughter's MP3 player. When I load the
software I get a promt telling me that it is not compatible with windows XP.
The MP3 player is an ILO and it says on the package windows compatible, I
just don't understand. Mt pc will not even recognize the player at all and
the USB port is functioning properly.

 

[granjan]

I don't know exactly what I've done to my computer, but now the mp3 player
is not recognized at all by my computer.
I have given up on that I guess. I took it to my other daughter's house
yesterday and it works perfectly on hers also. It is a Dell Dimension 8250
with XP SP2. Anyway, now I have a different problem...my digital camera
used to show up as a removeable disk...now it shows up as a hard disk drive.
It still works fine. My Dell AIO printer now shows up as a removeable disk
G. It works fine also. My flash drive will not work now...it shows up as
unknown device now and Windows says replace the drive. What the heck is
happening?

 

[Galen]

In granjan <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

I don't know exactly what I've done to my computer, but now the mp3
player is not recognized at all by my computer.
I have given up on that I guess. I took it to my other daughter's
house yesterday and it works perfectly on hers also. It is a Dell
Dimension 8250 with XP SP2. Anyway, now I have a different
problem...my digital camera used to show up as a removeable
disk...now it shows up as a hard disk drive. It still works fine. My
Dell AIO printer now shows up as a removeable disk G. It works fine
also. My flash drive will not work now...it shows up as unknown
device now and Windows says replace the drive. What the heck is
happening?

Buggered if I know? *grins*

Actually, it sounds more and more like you've got some sort of corruption on
the driver front.

Unplug every USB device
Press the Start button
Click on Run
Type "sysdm.cpl" without the quotes of course
Press Enter
Click on the Hardware tab
Press the Device Manager button
Scroll down until you see "Universal Serial Bus controllers"
Right click on one of them and select uninstall
Do that for everything you see there in the USB section (just the USB
section of course)
Reboot and let Windows load any drivers
Start plugging stuff back in...

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind,
which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply
there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations." -
Sherlock Holmes

 

[granjan]

Just one problem...my mouse is usb connected. If I delete all usb items I
won't be able to point to anything. Right?

 

[Galen]

In granjan <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Just one problem...my mouse is usb connected. If I delete all usb
items I won't be able to point to anything. Right?

Nope but it'll reinstall on boot. WinKey brings up the start button, arrows
move up, etc... Of course you can just reach down and hit the button and
turn it off and back on.

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind,
which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply
there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations." -
Sherlock Holmes

 

[Guest]

I am having a simular problem with my daughter's MP3 player. When I load the
software I get a promt telling me that it is not compatible with windows XP.
The MP3 player is an ILO and it says on the package windows compatible, I
just don't understand. Mt pc will not even recognize the player at all and
the USB port is functioning properly.

 

[Guest]

To all; I am having some of the same problems only with my phone. What I
learned is that there are may types of audio files. When a audio player says
mp3 player that is the only type of file it plays. If you go to explore and
view the details of your music files, you can see what type of file
extention your audio file has. With windows media 10 player you need to
purchase an encoder to convert files such as .wma to .mp3. If you go to the
windows knowledge base and search for 'convert wma to mp3' it can give you
more information and links to software. Hope this helps someone.