I recently purchased a Sansa e250r (refurbished). It is able to boot into the original firmware fine. I installed the drivers on my WinXP machine and can see the contents of the e250r when it is connected via USB. I cannot get it into manufacturer mode. The steps I followed were:
1. Unit is turned off
2. Turn on Hold
3. Press and hold select (center button between the scroll wheel)
4. Insert USB (while still holding select)
At this point the player turns on. The screen stays off, the scroll wheel turns blue. I never see a drive mounted or any other sign. When I try to run the e200rpatcher.exe it reports
[INFO] Searching for E200R
[ERR] Could not find any USB busses.
I am able to get the player into Recovery Mode which mounts a drive to my PC. I tried loading other MI4s from
http://daniel.haxx.se/sansa/mi4.html. All load fine, the original firmware loads fine but I can never get into manufacturer mode.
Any suggestions are welcome. I am trying to prepare this device as a gift for Christmas so timing is of the essence. Thanks you!