Sansa Clip+ Rehabilitation

[noapparentfunction]

Hey guys,

Ever since I bought my Clip+ last year and installed RockBox (my entire reason for buying it, too) it's been my favorite player in my car and on foot.

The other day while carrying it around it appeared to have crashed. Sometimes I'd have to repair it by holding down the power button for about 15 seconds and turning it back on.

This is when the real trouble began. I got a blank screen with a "File Not Found" message on it, as well as a USB Bootloader Mode screen. I didn't want to lose any of the music on my SD card so I removed that just in case. Plugging it in is where things started to get hairy. I opened RockBox and attempted to remove Rockbox, and then reinstall it. I ended up with the device frozen on the startup screen (RockBox logo) with 4.0.0 written on top. Nothing happens after this.

I am able to get it to boot into the original Sansa firmware, but plugging it in does not allow me to do much. The whole device is acting very strange. There was a point where a default config RockBox loaded but it crashed pretty often. Now I can't get the "SANSA CLIPP" drive to show up on anymore. Are there any diagnostics I could run to help pin down exactly how to wipe this device clean and install a new copy? I do not remember the exact build I had while it was working.

Latest development:

All I can do is plug the device into my PC while holding in the center button, and I receive this readout:

Code: [Select]

Loading firmware
Length: 92A20
Checksum: 39CC9EC
Model name: cli+
Loading rockbox.sansa

[saratoga]

If you can boot the sandisk firmware you could go to the settings menu and reformat the player.  That will remove the possibility of a corrupted file system, although if the storage is failing it probably won't help much.

Note that after you do this you'll lose your rockbox folder, so make sure you boot into the sandisk firmware and put a new copy of rockbox onto the device. 

[noapparentfunction]

Hi Saratoga – thank you for your quick reply.

Unfortunately, I do believe I really screwed the pooch on this one. I was doing some more fiddling around with the player and now it has entered (from what Googling suggests) is essentially a Sansa coma. The screen does not turn on at all, and plugging it into my PC shows messages of some kind of "M200" device having 32.1MB of UNDEF (guessing Undefined) storage & that this is really the Sansa's brain...which seems very dead. I may have to look into a replacement sometime soon. I wish I had tried what you mentioned earlier, but you may have also been right on your second point about the storage failing.

Just curious, can failing storage actually be fixed by somebody skilled enough? If so maybe I'll get a replacement and donate the player to the cause. Thanks again Saratoga for your help.

[saratoga]

I don't think anyone really understands what the problem is when the NAND stops working.  It's possible that it could be reset somehow, or it could be that the hardware is defective. 

[noapparentfunction]

I suppose I'll buy a new one & keep the old for its battery & buttons. Appreciate the advice.