MP3 player problems

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

In news:%23vkKAMwCGHA.2696@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl,
granjan <me@nowhere.com> 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

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.

In news:OGHfmuzCGHA.2320@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl,
granjan <me@nowhere.com> 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

"granjan" <me@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:%23vkKAMwCGHA.2696@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
>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

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

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

In news:%231jmp49CGHA.4000@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl,
granjan <me@nowhere.com> 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

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?

In news:uvxT8MBDGHA.3984@TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl,
granjan <me@nowhere.com> 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