1. Check for viruses on Rizone player. I have two of these players and both were infected with viruses in the autorun.
2. Make a backup of the complete Rizone player flash drive to an appropriate folder on your hard drive. If you do not you will lose a lot of the internal playlists for the player.
3. Test the flash drive with h2testw or you can copy 1GB VOB files from a non protected DVD one at a time and play them from your computers vlc/mpc/media player from the flash drive until the files will no longer play. This method is way faster than h2testw.
4. Get a refund. I have 2 of such units. I got a 50% refund from one seller and a 75% refund from the other seller. Use the info from above and any viruses found as basis for refund.
5. Do not use windows to format this drive if you are using Vista. If you have already formatted with windows vista format you will need to use the players internal format to reformat the drive before proceding. Vista format will cause the internal flash drive to place giberish files in each directory and you will not be able to copy any file to any directory other than the root.
6. Download mkdosfs from
Linux mkdosfs for Windows NT/2K/XP. Windows enabler does not work in Vista and windows Vista format does not work with this flash drive. mkdosfs works beautifully for me.
7. Unzip the mkdosfs package and place files in c:\mkdosfs
8. Open a dos Command window and navigate to the mkdosfs directory by typing: cd c:\mkdosfs
9. Run the mkdosfs format by typing the appropriate line from one of the below options:
1) to format 1gb fat32 drive type:
mkdosfs -v -F 32 -n 1GB_DRV X: 2060000
2) to format 2GB fat32 drive type:
mkdosfs -v -F 32 -n 2GB_DRV X: 4120000
3) to format 4gb fat32 drive type:
mkdosfs -v -F 32 -n 4GB_DRV X: 8240000
where X: is the drive to format please replace the X with the appropriate drive letter of your Rizone player.
-v is the verbose switch that will tell you what mkdosfs is doing to the drive and tell about any errors.
-F is the Fat size notice that this is capital there is another switch that is -f you will get an error if you do not use capital F
-n is the volume name switch. in this instance the drives will be named nGB_DRV where n is 1 2 or 4 depending on the
size of your drive
as stated above X: is the drive to format. you must replace with the drive letter of the Rizone player on you system.
2060000 is the number of sectors on the drive to format. 2060000 corresponds to around .98GB or .99GB of data.
Multiply this number by the number of GB the drive actually has ie 2060000X4=8240000 for a 4GB drive.
10. Copy the backup of the directory structure with all playlists and folders to the Rizone Player.
11. Disable the Sleep mode on the player because it causes the player to act quirky or locks up the player.
12. Always use earphones/headphones. The player freezes often if watching video and listening through the built in speaker.
13. Purchase a battery extender for your device. The batteries on this device are utter crap. They will only recharge a few times before they fail completely and the play time on the tiny battery is a joke. I got a usb battery extender that takes 4 rechargeable AA batteries on Ebay for under $10. I put tape on the units power button and just power the unit by turning on the battery extender. The battery extender will bypass the internal battery and allow you to use your unit away from your PC.
14. You can purchase and install up to 16GB microSD/TF SDHC card to get back some of your lost space. A 16GB microSD card runs about $50, an 8GB microSD card is about $15-$20, a 4GB microSD card is about $6-$10 as of July 2009. Correction at bottom - please read.
15. My seller said to make sure your mp3 files are not above 4800khz or the player will not recognize it. For video files, they can be XVID AVI, FLV, or RMVB as long as they are 320X240 and have an mp3 audio stream. The framerate doesn't seem to matter. If you try to use FLV files from youtube you will find they are H263 with mp4 audio and will need to be converted. Most XVID AVI are 640X480 or above and use a variety of audio streams and will need to be converted. I have been using AVS video converter with the Archos 404/504/604 setting and all videos play great.
I have completed the above steps on both of my 4GB Rizone players and tested the player. It plays all of my mp3 music files, all of my video files with a great picture except for a flicker sometimes when plugged into the PC. It Does a great job of playing a picture slide show while listening to audio. Plays FM radio with amazing clarity and without losing signal easily. Records FM in stereo very well. And views txt files although the text is small. However, do not try to copy Nintendo games to the NES folder, the game playing functionality of the player was never completed. If you try it, it will lock up the player.
Hope this helps.
Correction: One of my sellers stated that it could take up to 16GB microSD/TF card, the other just replied that it could only take up to a 4GB microSD/TF. Neither could tell me if it worked with SDHC or what revision 1-6 SDHC it could support. Another poster on this blog said he got it working with 4GB microSD SDHC card. Does anyone have any more information on what the TF card slot will support?? I have not tested this and was about to buy an 8GB card until I got the eMail from my second seller.