I should say that everything used to work. Then I had a problem out of the blue where it stopped detecting the SD card (both in the player and when I connected it to the PC). At the same time, I was no longer able to get the Clip Zip to eject properly from the PC (the PC will think it is ejected, but the Clip Zip will show the USB connection even when unplugged), and the device would lock up until I did a forced shutdown by holding the power button down for 20 seconds or so.
Now, I cannot get the PC to even acknowledge the Clip Zip's internal drive. When I plug the device in, Windows makes the sound of a something being connected by USB, but nothing shows up in the list of connected drives. However, if I go into the Device Manager in Control Panel, the Sansa Clip Zip appears in the list (not greyed out, either). However, it is listed as "Status: Needs troubleshooting". When I right-click and choose to troubleshoot, it says "There is a problem with driver for USB Mass Storage Device. Reinstalling the driver might fix the problem." It gives me the option "Apply this fix" so I try that, and then it says "Installing device driver" for a minute or so, before telling me that it failed to install the driver. It does not give me any other solutions except to post on the Microsoft help forums.
I would be content formatting the whole thing and starting from scratch, but how can I do that if Windows will not even let me see it?