My sansa e200 series mp3 player won’t start up. Every time I turn it on, it gives me a black screen and stays lit up and wont shut off unless I hold the power/menu button down for 15 seconds. It can’t be read by my computer in recovery mode. Can you tell me how to fix it please?
That usually means you either formatted it in recovery mode, or that the flash chip came out of its socket. If you’re sure you didn’t do the first, then open it up and see if the memory card is loose.
@saratoga wrote:
That usually means you either formatted it in recovery mode, or that the flash chip came out of its socket. If you’re sure you didn’t do the first, then open it up and see if the memory card is loose.
I did format it. I’ve done it many of times and it still worked. Why this time?
@tastethefailure wrote:
@saratoga wrote:
That usually means you either formatted it in recovery mode, or that the flash chip came out of its socket. If you’re sure you didn’t do the first, then open it up and see if the memory card is loose.
I did format it. I’ve done it many of times and it still worked. Why this time?
Formatting the recovery mode immediately bricks the player. You haven’t done it many times. You may have used recovery mode, or formatted, but you haven’t formatted the recovery mode disk many times 
Maybe this would work better if you started from the beginning and explained what you actually did.
I too have the same problem with my e200v1 (i think). I needed to purge all my songs to start over, so i decided t reformat. I thought that would be the best and fastest way to get rid of all the music. I plugged in the player and reformatted. I dont think i was in recovery mode, i didnt do anything special other than plug it into my pc. I loaded the music on and it worked fine for a while. I have a stand alone sansa speaker thingy that i port it to and it worked fine on there. I took it out to use it in the car and had no problem till it got to a “bad file” and froze. I put it back on the dock and it worked fine for a while longer. Took it out to mow the yard with it and again it froze with a “bad file.” I was able to dock it again and check to see if it was indeed a bad file and it played fine on the dock. So i thought maybe i should redo the firmware. But now it wont even turn on, the thumb wheel will go blue but nothing else. I tried the “lock and hold rec” connect and nothing. I tried the “lock and hold /<<” and still nothing…do i have a brick? say it aint so.
Thanks.
If you are getting a blue scroll wheel light and nothing else, the e200 is not successfully loading the firmware from memory. The most basic thing to check for at this point is a dislodged (NAND flash) memory daughterboard. The e200 v1 deries has a small board that plugs in to the main circuit board, with the memory chips on it.
The player is looking for the firmware, its operating system, loaded in these memory chips, in the reserved partition.
Remove the metal back of the e200, and you’ll see the battery module. Above it is a black plastic rectangle. The daughterboard is behind this. Press downward on the little grey foam rectangle within this larger black one, and see if the board seats with a “click”. Replace the back, and see if the player will now start up.
When in Recovery Mode, the player exposes or opens the reserved partition. On the PC, this will be shown as an icon 16MB FORMAT. I would have named the partition differently, as you must never format this partition using the Windows Format command! To do so erases the firmware and required files for the player.
Let us know if the player comes back to life after pressing the daughterboard connector.
If it doesn’t, the device must be recovered carefully using the e200tool utility, a careful task requiring linux.
Bob :wink:
Thank you. Thank you. As Billy Joel said about Captin Jack - a little push and you’ll be smilin’. I was fighting this all morning.
Is it possible to fix the player if you delete that backup 16mb partition? The device is physically fine but I was stupid and deleted that partition that 16mb and now I can’t mount the flash memory in order to fix it because its not in ‘MSC’ mode so when plugging it in nothing shows up.
This is your only hope. It requires Linux, geekiness, a fair amount of courage, and a friend.
If it works, have your friend pat you on the back; you will have deserved it. 
If it doesn’t, bend over and have your friend plant their boot in your backside (numerous times) for deleting the 16MB partition and transforming a perfectly good mp3 player into a nice, shiny black paperweight needlessly. 
Luckily I’m a linux geek haha lets give it a shot, thanks!
See, too much knowledge can be a bad thing . . . Good Luck!
SiegeMachine wrote:
Luckily I’m a linux geek haha lets give it a shot, thanks!
See, too much knowledge can be a bad thing :stuck_out_tongue:
Good Luck!
Holy **bleep** batman it works! I was having issues trying to mount the device before so that I could manually rebuild the 16mb parition myself but luckily that tool found a way to connect to the device memory and create a partition and then the rest of the guide is copying those base files back in and now it works THANK GOD!
Whew! That was close!
Good Deal!
This totally worked!! Thanks a lot. Very helpful.
What if it doesn’t turn on and your still getting just the blue wheel? Does that mean you deleted the partition or is there another problem?
What did you actually do?
Thank you so much!!! This worked like a charm - down to the click. :) :) Awesome - you saved me a bunch of money.
Sullie395
