Creative Zen

northwest1965

I am getting the error message 'unable to read from or write to'.
I have checked it it on when connected by usb to my pc. It is listed in the device manager as working properly

Any help anyone?

culpepper

OH has a creative zen and it started messing up.
First we did 'reset' using the little hole at the bottom.That didn't help with his music but it did let us have access to the zen from the computer. You can find how to do that by googling.
Then we downloaded new firmware and ran that.
It still wouldn't recognise inside of Wmedia player so we tried it on a laptop with an older version of WMP and it recognised it.
It hasn't gone wrong since and works with the newer WMP once it was seen by the older version..

My DD has the same player and hers just stopped working with no music lists being shown.
We let it run right down(left it without charging for ages but kept trying to power it up) and then charged it right up from nothing ,held the power button 'on' for a few seconds and it now works again.

Hope there is something that helps in that lot !

Dave_C_2

Have a look at the troubleshooting section in the FAQ on this website. There is quite a lot about solving USB problems.

Is this first-time use or was the Zen working before?

HTH, Dave

northwest1965

I've had the Zen about 3 years, its been great up to now. It just happened for the 1st time yesterday.

Dave_C_2

If you have one, I suggest trying with another cable (one of mine was fine with a camera but not with the Zen)

If you haven't already done so do a clean-up (instructions in the FAQ) before plugging in the Zen.

Other than that I can't improve on the suggestions in the FAQ

Dave

RussJK

As a last resort, see if you can use the official SD Formatter on it:
http://www.sdcard.org/consumers/formatter_3/

northwest1965

I am not so sure it is the lead, the pc says it recognises it and when I open up Zen Explorer it is not in light grey.

I am afraid that if I format the card I will lose everything and not be able to put my music back on again.

The only thing it is allowing me to do at the moment is transfer music/etc and put in the data library.

Creative wont help as the product is more than 3 years old

Esoog

I've always found the zen software (over about 3 versions of Zen) to be crap and have always just dumped the music using windows explorer, takes longer though.

Dave_C_2

RussJK wrote: »

As a last resort, see if you can use the official SD Formatter on it:
http://www.sdcard.org/consumers/formatter_3/

Russ,

Sorry, but the SD card (if there is one fitted) is quite separate from the Zen Operating System. Formatting it won't help. This would be like formatting an SD Card on a laptop to fix a Windows problem.

Dave

Dave_C_2

northwest1965 wrote: »

I am not so sure it is the lead, the pc says it recognises it and when I open up Zen Explorer it is not in light grey.

I am afraid that if I format the card I will lose everything and not be able to put my music back on again.

The only thing it is allowing me to do at the moment is transfer music/etc and put in the data library.

I don't understand what your problem is. In your first post you said that you were getting a read/write error message. Now you say that you can open up Zen Explorer and transfer music/etc and put it in the data library. This sounds to be working normally.

Before we go much further, what type of Zen is it? Zen * , Zen MX, Zen X-fi or whatever.

Is the problem with the Zen or the SD card?

Please describe exactly what the problem is.

Dave

* Creative caused much confusion over naming this product just "Zen" It's next to impossible trying to search for answers as you get replies back for every type of Zen from Zen Micro to Zen X-Fi2

RussJK

Dave_C wrote: »

Sorry, but the SD card (if there is one fitted) is quite separate from the Zen Operating System. Formatting it won't help. This would be like formatting an SD Card on a laptop to fix a Windows problem.

...

Despite the name it's not just a tool to format SD cards. The official SD Formatter will format any flash memory including the NAND flash which resides on USB devices. It won't touch the OS, and the USB device will restore the filesystem automatically onto the NAND flash (if it's functioning correctly).

I've seen it correct problems with devices in the past when they wouldn't show up in explorer, but as I said only try it as a last resort - i.e., if all other avenues have been exhausted, then you may as well give it a try.

Edit: since the OP is now saying that they can transfer files, then try backing up everything from the Zen onto the hard drive, and using the SD Formatter on the MP3 Player. Nothing to lose if that is the case - just time if it doesn't help at all.