Sansa Troubleshooting

See the SansaFAQ

Power-down

If the Sansa hangs and normal power-off does not work, press and hold the power button until the unit shuts off (this could take upwards of 30 seconds, but it will eventually work). Disconnecting the battery is rarely, if ever, necessary.

USB Connection/Charging Problems

• While running Rockbox you cannot access the Sansa with your computer as Rockbox currently has no USB support. You need to set your player to MSC mode and reboot into the original firmware (by holding down (|<<) or connect the unit while it is turned off (the Sansa firmware should load automatically) to connect the unit.

• Charging via USB or AC adaptor works (for some people, see here) but it's much slower than the original firmware. Slow enough that if you cause a significant enough drain by having the backlight on or using a high-draw codec, for example, it might not charge at all.

• If you have a microSD card in your player you must either remove the card on USB plug-in (you can insert it after connecting and to write data to the card as long as it's not a SDHC card) or boot the original firmware manually first and then connect to USB.

Bootloader Fails

If the bootloader does not load Rockbox properly have a look at the return code. The error codes of the bootloader are:

• 0: "OK"
• -1: "File not found"
  • check if OF.bin is located in the SYSTEM folder (if so, follow the instructions in the following section.)
  • check if "rockbox.e200" is located in the root directory of the Sansa (if so, follow the instructions in the following section.)
• -2: "Read failed (chksum)"
• -3: "Read failed (model)"
• -4: "Read failed (image)"
• -5: "Bad checksum"
• -6: "File too big"

"OLD ROCKBOX INSTALLATION DETECTED, ABORTING" Error

I installed Rockbox before using the old method (without sansapatcher). Now when I try to use sansapatcher, it gives me the error "OLD ROCKBOX INSTALLATION DETECTED, ABORTING". What should I do?

The sansapatcher tool has detected that you have previously installed Rockbox using the old installation method. In order to continue, you first need to restore the original SanDisk firmware to your Sansa. This can be achieved in either of the following ways:

• Using the SanDisk Firmware Updater: Download the SanDisk Firmware Updater and run it. It should guide you through installing the latest SanDisk firmware on your Sansa.

• Using a PP5022.mi4 file: If you have a SanDisk PP5022.mi4 file with the SanDisk firmware in it, just put it into the root directory of your Sansa. If your Sansa is running version 1.03 or above of the SanDisk firmware you will need to rename this file to firmware.mi4. Now unplug the USB cable and make sure to start back up into the SanDisk firmware again (by holding |<< if you have the Rockbox bootloader currently installed). It should give a message saying that it is upgrading the firmware. If you don't have the original mi4 firmware around, try getting one from here.

Once that's all taken care of, you can go back and complete the bootloader installation.

Unable to decrypt the .mi4 file

Did you use mi4code 0.9.30? That's the only one that knows of the keys for the 1.03 version out-of-the-box.

I Switched to a Different Theme and Now I Don't See Anything

When foreground and background colour of the theme are the same this will happen. You can use the voice features to navigate the menus and change to a different theme or return to the default settings by pressing the REC button at the bootloader text screen or deleting the file"config.cfg" from the .rockbox folder while your Sansa is connected to your PC.

I Can't Find My Music Files or the "MUSIC" Folder

The Sansa firmware hides the MUSIC folder every time is starts up so you have to work around it. Two available options are:

• Set the file view to show All files or
• Create a new folder with a different name and put your files in there.

Strange Static Noise

If you hear a strange static noise while browsing the menus or during the quieter parts of songs, you are not alone. This is the sound of the Sansa "thinking" and is an unfortunate feature of the Sansa hardware. It can therefore also be heard while using the original firmware, although it's slightly quieter according to some.

Unbrick

If you cannot boot into the original firmware by holding |<< at startup or otherwise cannot get a response from your player, see SansaE200Unbrick.