Too bad for you. It’s true that many reseller websites (at least French ones) don’t clearly specify if devices have radio support or not - they often lack technical data in general. Last year my GF and I we were looking for a mp3 player, we discovered that sometimes it’s just a letter in the product code that matters, since that we look twice for product codes on resellers’ pages and look for the different between versions of the same product before looking for resellers. JC Vandamme would probably call this “being aware” :-).
After reading everything I could find on this forum regarding updating the firmware, I had little success.
I couldn’t achieve any update, even though I followed the instructions posted here by all of these helpful people.
So, I reformatted and used the Sansa Firmware Updater, and it worked perfectly. The link to the page at Sandisk.com that has the Firmware Updater is listed below.
http://www.sandisk.com/Retail/Default.aspx?CatID=1376
The Clip updated properly after using the Firmware Updater, and the version reads correctly on the Clip in the Settings section. I also now have a listing to choose which mode to use (which was not there before), and I anticipate all of the fwd/reverse functions working correctly now.
Thanks to everyone, especially sansafix and Jake for their advise.
Message Edited by sansasean on 01-05-2008 11:59 AM
@lehel wrote:
I also purchased a Clip from France that seems to have no FM Radio capabilities. I actually bought it as a present to my wife who loves listening to the radio. I am sending it back to the vendor and ask for another Clip with radio. Paying extra for postage sending and back and forth again, it will cost more than I originally planned for the player. I just wanted to say that it sould be more clearly mentioned in the advertisements that in Europe there are stripped-down models also on sale. regards
You know the radio feature also depends on the firmware region. I have tried many firmware for different regions and only the one for America gives me radio support. Maybe you could have flash it with American firmware before returning it. Just something to try.
So after following the directions to get it in MSC mode…how do I get it out of it?
Navigate to Settings>USBMode> Select Autodetect or MTP. This assumes the firmware 1.01.18 is installed.
I havent even been able to get my clip to turn on since i put it in msc mode.
I’ve upgraded to 18A firmware, switched to msc mode and also I cannot turn on the player. Only by using usbdeview to delete registry entry with sansa clip and pluging it in with “service” mode (switch to ‘hold’ and press the round button) it can be turned on (and after unpluggin it plays music and radio), otherwise i got only “Sandisk Sansa” text and nothing works. When I turn it off and on it stucks on “Sandisk Sansa”. Switching back to mtp or auto doesn’t help, but I manged to get it working fine by downgrading it to .17A firmare (unfortunately no msc mode to select in options). To upload songs I need to enter “service” mode, but at least player starts normaly. I tried formating it mannualy but that doesn’t help, may problem is not related to tag encoding, looks like msc mode is bugged.
Also why in mtable.sys there are entries about two files even if player is formated:
mmc:0: VORC0000.WAV V O R C 0 0 0 0 U n k n o w n V O ˙˙ U n k n o w n ˙˙ mmc:0: FMRC0000.WAV F M R C 0 0 0 0
Maybe its ok, but i was just curious about it 
I hope Sansa devs will fix msc issues in next firmware.
Message Edited by shamrok on 01-11-2008 02:00 PM
I was having problems with fast forwarding when using my Clip to listen to audiobooks. i checked out these threads on it and found this update that solves it. I had no problems updating my Clip and now the fast forward works great and it is a pleasure listening to the books. Thank you so much for putting this out for us. I love the Clip and happy I bought it. You guys are great!
Dear jake,
I tried to proceed exactly as discribed by you. As a consequence the display remains dark and only the blue ring has light. Nothing else can be done (in no mode). Do you have any additional advice for me
Thanks in advance
bekoba
THANK YOU “SANSASEAN”! After playing around with this for DAYS and not being able to download the updates by following the other advice in this forum, I followed your suggested link (from your comment on 1/4/8) and it worked! FINALLY! Your advice should be listed first! I am so frustrated that Sansa sent me to this forum instead of just telling me to follow the download instructions on their web-page! I hope others can find your suggestion quickly instead of having to weed through all of the other suggestions. THANKS AGAIN!
Here’s the download link incase anyone did see Sansasean’s post:
http://www.sandisk.com/Retail/Default.aspx?CatID=1376
Message Edited by carrief on 01-14-2008 10:31 AM
I just bought a Clip a couple weeks ago. Is the above Sansa firmware updater recommended for everyone, or just those having specific problems?
Firmware upgrade is highly recommended for everyone.
Hello all!
I bought my Sansa Clip 2Gb in december. It works good except of high self-discharge rate. One day my Sansa stopped to detect on my computer. Reading this forum I upgraded the firmware from 01.01.11A to the latest version provided here. After that I lost the FM radio option. Renaming the firmware file to m300f.bin helped with the radio, but today I found that now it can’t display russian tags on the screen. Should I rename th firmware file to m300R.bin? 
Any suggestions?
No ideas?
Finally I tried m300a.bin. It has radio, but it still does not correctly display russian characters when the language is set to english. If I switch language to russian it starts to display everything I need, but when the language is set to english (it’s more convenient for me, shorter menus, no annoying menu scrolling etc) it DOES NOT display russian symbols except of (!) menu item in language selection section.
Version 01.01.11A allowed me to see russian characters when menu language was set to english. If this feature is not available anymore, where can I get the old firmware version?
Did you make sure that the version of the firmware you uploaded was 01.01.18A? That’s the north american version. It’s the one that supports FM radio.
Also, at night this forum is pretty much dead…
how do you download music on your sansa clip
This won’t work i have tried again again to download it but it sends me to something called WinRAR and i don’t know what to do from there i am getting extemely frustrated cause my Mp3 player also won’t turn on!
to chris1207
Yes, the version it shows me in settings menu is 01.01.18A. It’s all ok with the radio now and the only issue is a problem with displaying international characters from ID3 tags. It can always display these characters (even japanese hieroglyphs) in language selection menu, but the song titles are displayed correctly only if the language is set to russian. Version 01A had no such problems. Should I downgrade the firmware or just wait for the new one? Or maybe I should use european version of firmware with FM radio?
And of course I know about the time, but here I have a 12 hours time shift
So are you saying that it only with display international character such as those used in Japanese and Chinese if the language is set to Russian? That weird, but I’m sure the new firmware with have some kind of fix!
Also, I didn’t know that the European version had an FM radio! FM seems like a North America only feature!
Oh and if you’re in a region that has a 12 hour time difference then the North American firmware (the one with the A) probably isn’t your best bet.
Now where is that **bleep** 01.01.19a?!
Hey thanks this fixed my old Sansa Clip 1g Black that was not reconizing the files in the player. This is the best MP3 player ever I even put it through the washer and dryer and after a day of letting it dry out it started right up!! Thanks!!
Now to update to the newest version!!!
Message Edited by beequick on 04-16-2008 03:40 PM
