Sansa e260 4GB; total, absolute, unforgiving year-zero reinstall of everything

[TerrenceMichaelson]

I have what I think is a simple question, but I couldn't find any definitive answers with a variety of searches, so if I'm covering ground from another thread, please be gentle.

Anyway, my Sansa e260 has been acting funny for a while (hanging while updating DB, temporary brickage, etc.) and I don't care to approach the problems piecemeal--I want to completely wipe the thing and give it a fresh, factory-fresh, start. I'm using Mac OS 10.5.6, so it takes a few more steps to get the PC-centric e260 connected. It took me a while to get used to this and I had complications with the source HD with my music files on it, so the poor little player got roughly disconnected many many times. Because of this, I think the problems are more or less unpredictable, so I don't want to fix it or clean it up, I want to vaporize it and start over.

I have access to a PC, so I can use the official SanDisk firmware installer. Will that do the trick of reformatting the device and clearing it of all files, SanDisk, Rockbox, MP3s, etc.? I have very elementary command line experience with the Unix-y Mac OS X, but I trust myself to follow directions with command line stuff if necessary.

So I don't have to make another possibly ill-advised post here, I'll provide a list of symptoms my e260 has exhibited. If anyone understands these problems, let me know so I can prevent them in the future.

- About thirty seconds after clicking "Update Now" in the database settings, the device hangs and must be reset by holding the power button for a pretty long time (almost a minute or so). When it reboots the "Initializing Database" text shows up on the Rockbox splash screen, but the database is not updated, and those tracks that I know are on the player won't play. The tag info flashes for a moment and turns into dashes. If I then click "Update Now" again, the e260 doesn't hang. After five or ten minutes I reset, the "Initializing" text doesn't show up on the splash screen, but the database is accurate and the tracks play just fine.

- Recently, the problem has been complicated. After the first reboot, the splash screen looks corrupted (some red and blue lines across the screen, properly colored but corrupted text and image) and resets itself. It will continue to display the corrupted splash screen and reset itself ad infinitum unless I hold the power button for a very long time. After that, it boots fine and the database is correct again.

Infinite thanks to anyone that can help. Again, apologies if any of my concerns are answered in other threads; I honestly tried every imaginable combination of terms to find my answer.

[Chronon]

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

This gives instructions on formatting your device and recovering the original firmware.  Then you should have a good starting point for installing Rockbox from scratch.  Unsafe disconnection of your player is a good way to cause filesystem errors.  This can have all sorts of unpredictable consequences.  There's a possibility that repairing the filesystem with fsck.vfat (or similar) will fix your problems.  Otherwise, try the guide that I linked above.