I think I broke my Sansa - can't find rockbox.mi4

[wahan]

Hey guys,

I have the Sansa e250.

I used the automatic installer. First I installed the bootloader, then rockbox, then fonts. I also installed one theme. All seems fine.

Then I disconnected the Sansa. It restarted. But when it boot back up, it say can't find rockbox.mi4, can't find rockbox.e200... said both files are not found.

The worst problem is that my computer won't even detect the Sansa anymore. When I plug it in, it say connected on the Sansa but it does not show on the computer. Rockbox can't find it anymore either.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[unintentionallyfunny]

Have you tried loading it in manufacturer mode? Try doing that and then connecting it to your computer. It worked for me when I had the same problem (and I have to do that every time I want my computer to recognize it).

I don't have an e250 so you might have to look up how to get to "manufacturer mode" (=the original software) for yourself. But for my c240, I hold the "left" button while powering up. BTW, don't worry about losing any files by doing this.

[MarcGuay]

The worst problem is that my computer won't even detect the Sansa anymore. When I plug it in, it say connected on the Sansa but it does not show on the computer.

1)  Can you boot into the original firmware?  (Hold the LEFT button while it starts up).

2)  If yes, make sure you have the USB Mode set to MSC.

3)  When you plug in your player via USB to your computer from the OFF state does the original Sansa firmware says "Connected" but it doesn't show up anywhere in Windows?  If so, I have no idea.

4)  If you can get Windows (I'm assuming that's the OS you're using) to recognize it as a drive letter (i.e. G:\) then make sure there is a folder called ".rockbox" on it.  If not, unzip the current build to the root of your player and reboot it.

[p0rtia]

I just experienced the exact same problem as wahan on a Sansa e250, so I thought I'd take time out in my search of the forums to ask for help here rather than start a new thread. I'm running a MacBook Pro OS 10.4.10. I used the automated installation and all went well -- except that the player did not "automatically reconnect itself to my Mac" as is mentioned in the manual instructions for bootloader installation on a Mac (bullet number 6). I looked for instructions on what to do in that situation, found none, unplugged the unit, and voila: can't boot the unit, and can't get my comptuer to recognize the unit (switched to XP mode and was still unable to get the computer to recognize the unit. Get the same error message as wahan ("can't find rockbox.mi4" etc.) Tried holding down the left key when booting, which does not work (get an additional message "can't load /system/OF/mi4 can't load system/OF/bin"). Advice  greatly appreciated.

[MarcGuay]

Don't worry, your player isn't broken, it just needs some friendly guidance towards the light.  I don't know much about the Mac install process but it sounds to me like you need to start from scratch; check the SansaE200Port page in the wiki and read the Troubleshooting & Unbrick pages.

Wouldn't it be nice if people posted the answers to their problems instead of just disappearing?

[p0rtia]

Hey MarcQuay -- Thanks for touching base. :-) After I posted here, and finding no solutions (all a bit greek to me, actually), I did a web search for various Sansa e250 problems and quickly saw that I could probably reformat my unit. The third fix I tried worked (pretty good, huh?), so I got the unit working again--with the Sansa OS. Shoot -- thought I had the URL to the working fix here, but it's on the XP side of my MacBook Pro (which is where I had to go for the fix). I'll go get it and post it below. Would like to try Rockbox again when I have another few hours free (!). I'm thinking at this point that the automated install on the Mac side basically didn't work, so if there's anyone out there who got it to work on an Intel Mac, I'd love to hear from ya. Cheers!

Path to getting e250 working again as mentioned above (via recovery mode and reformat):

http://www.freewebs.com/recoversansa

Should mention that though I'm a Mac user, recovery mode only works on a PC. Of course, any Mac user buying this unit has an Intel Mac anyway, so that is sort of obvious.

Will go and check Troubleshooting and Unbrick now and check back later to see if anyone has any input on installing Rockbox on Sansa 250 via Intel Mac. :-)

[saratoga]

You don't need to use Windows to use recovery mode.  Its just a UMS disk, it'll work with any OS:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/SansaE200Unbrick