Could there be a new Vista bug that messes with MP4 players?
 

I use a laptop that runs Vista for the last two years, and for almost that long, I've had a no-name Chinese MP4 player (2.8" touch screen w/8 gigabytes). I love my player! Excellent sound quality, big memory and good battery life. About a month ago my player got corrupted. Specifically, the on-board memory lost the ability to open folders in folders, one of the albums got completely corrupted, and the machine froze up on certian files and had to be reset with the hidden reset button. It still worked fine with files on the secondary chip (it has a slot for mini SD card).

Seems like time fro a new machine, so I got the newer version of the same player, and i was blown away! Same great sound, 16gig onboard, video, calendar & a notepad, some good gsames and the thing is Fast!

Soon as I started copting files to the player, they got corrupted in exactly the same way, as the first player. They get corrupted as soon as they're copied onto the player (but oddly, not all of them)-- It must be my computer, but that checks out fine-- no viruses, no errors, nada.

I' thinking it's either some undetected bug, or some error on the USB port & support software. Anyone else have this problem?

16gb is hacked memory one im afraid - pretty sure as if the files are getting corrupted right away than its a bad sign
as for the other, have you tried reformatting

Thanks, But...
 

Thanks! The difficulties to the current player are precisely the problem with my last player, and that worked perfectly for two years. It could be a coincidence, but I'm suspecting it's something going on on the computer end of things. Besides that's the path of least resistance, so the best place to start with!

well, test for memory hacks anyway on the 16gb one
as for the other and garbled files, we see this now and again and funnily with vista, not sure why, can you get to an XP machine, where these players are generally happier, format it (not quick format) and then try add some files, see what happens - a reload of firmware usually does ythe trick but i think for you that not possible

Interesting about Vista. I didn't have any trouble with my old player until I let a buddy access it with his Mac and it installed a bunch of Spotlight related files. At first I thought those might have been the trouble, but I'm not so sure now.

I didn't get a backup copy of the software for the new player, so I'm not comfortable reformatting it yet. My old player had a number of added invisible files from the varius PCs and Macs that I've used it with (but they didn't affect the performance), and I think I was able to isolate the one that it came with. As soon as I got the new player, I copied all the files visible and invisible onto my PC, but I didnt find anything that ASeemed to be operating software, only folders and databases. Since I have very little experiennce with the insde of these players, do you have any recommendations for best software for checking/formatting these things?
Thanks!

well formatting is only effecting the player main memory and has nothing to do with firmware at all and it wont effect it, all its doing is resetting and wiping the main player memory (spring clean if u like) - it does not touch nor even know about firmware, thats a completely different thing

just locate the drive in windows, right click and select format - again, any music, video or images or files will be erased so back up them if needed)

Reformatting--
 

I had wanted to reformat the old player (8gb 2.8" touch screen), but was afraid there might be some sort of operating file in the memory (as was the case with my older Coby player--I didn't realize that the operating programs are completely hardwired in!). Now that I have a new non-functioning player, it seemed safe to reformat the old one, and sure enough, reformatting seems to have done the trick. I'm still testing it out, but it seems to be working perfectly.

I reformatted the new player yesterday (16gb 2.8" touch screen), and it seems to be OK, but it's going to take longer to test all the functions.

for the record, neither had memory hacks, and both of these models have excellent sound quality, however, the new one has a persistent hiss. I guess these items have to be judged on a piece-by-piece basis, which is tricky when ordering from the other hemisphere. Still for the price vs. features you get, it's reasonable gamble.

thanks again to everyone!

Not so fast.. Player won't accept new videos!
 

Reformatting fixed my old player completely. Audio and video.

Reformatting fixed my new player initially, and now I see m to ahve all the neccessary functions and all the cool new functions, EXCEPT..

After I first reformatted it, I uploaded a few MP3s and AVIs (formatted for my old player). Everyhitng worked perfectly. Then I uploaded a few more MP3s. Perfect.

But when I tried to upload more videos, they becomre instantly corrupted! (Bad file format).

I've tried copying them back to the computer, and they stay corrupted. I've tried it with different USB cords, in case there was a broken wire or something.

So I'm really confused, since the older player now works perfctly and completely, and there's no reason the new player shouldn't be working as well. Why only glitches on the video?

Could it be a USB issue?

Whoops=I spoke too soon.
 

Just discovered that not only can I not upload any new AVIs, but the new MP3s I put in the player aren't working either. It's really strange--All the files, audio and video, that I installed right after reformatting worked, but nothing else since.

Further exploration: The damaged MP3s, when I try to open them to my computer's WMP say the Microsoft MPEG-1 (50) codec is missing. Not sure why this change ould occur in the player and why, then, it couldn't play it itself... Meanwhile, I emailed the seller.. Hope he's honest.