I could really use some help with to unbrick my Sansa e280, which I am using with a Mac OS 10.4 (logged in with admin privileges).
In September, I successfully installed Rockbox 3.0 on this player, using the RBUTIL mac installer. Since then, I have used it with no problems, mostly listening to MP3 files on the microSD card, until:
In early January, I started getting the startup message, "cannot rebuild database." After a few weeks, the player froze during MP3 playback, with the message, "*PANIC* Updating size on empty dir entry 71". For a time, it would only freeze on MP3 playback (not FM radio), but the problem got progessively worse.
I tried updating the player to Rockbox 3.1 via the latest version of RBUTIL (1.0.9), and got a successful install message, but the player continued to boot into Rockbox 3.0, then freeze. I then tried uninstalling both the bootloader and the program with RBUTIL, which again reported success, but even after uninstall it still boots into Rockbox 3.0. I tried reinstalling both the bootloader and Rockbox 3.1 with the same results.
Now, the player freezes a few seconds with the same message, "*PANIC* Updating size on empty dir entry 71," even before I attempt playback or FM.
There are two invisible directories on the player, "/.rockbox" and "/.rockbox.1." For some reason these don't appear in the Mac OS "find invisible" utility: they do appear when I used an invisibility toggler utility (Visibility.app), which I have used to try and delete these directories, but they don't delete.
I also tried to delete the directories using Terminal, with the same result (the files don't delete).
The player boots with no problems into the original Sansa firmware.
Does anyone know how I can reinstall Rockbox and get this running again? Any ideas why I get the PANIC message, or why I'm unable to manually delete the program files?
HELP and THANKS! Tim