using mydisktest?
 

Dear Funt
I hope I have got hold of the correct utility (v2.42)
Is "test bad blocks" the operation to use?
I can see that this might reduce the useable capacity to the true capacity but will it not leave it still reporting the false high headline figure ?
I have not tried this yet (ebay correspondence might just get me a refund) but from old floppy disk days I'd suppose something similar to "32gb total capacity, 30gb in bad sectors, 2gb useable".
Thanks

I used "test bad blocks" operation and after this device was recognized in all the software with real capacity.

any link to this mydisctest, all i can find are pages in an asian language. Thanks

MyDiscTest 2.93 - in Chinese, I used this version.
MyDiscTest 2.42 - in English, I don't know whether it can be used for restoring real size of player or not.

In Chinese version I clicked on big button first (Test the drive now). After testing is finished I clicked left button (I guess "Yes") in the window which appeared. I don't remember exactly but I think than I clicked right button and after countdown is finished and new window was shown I clicked left button :)))
Maybe it's better to use 2.42 and try to repair player with it. If it doesn't help, than use Chinese version 2.9x.

After having tried various sequences including the ones described in this thread I am no nearer to getting the things working again!

I can get a 2 drive scenario with one saying 15.9Gb but NOT appearing on the Memory Info on the player but DOES appear in My Computer along with the 17Mb drive which appears on the player as well.

Setting the partition to various different sizes from 2Gb to 8Gb yields various other strange results including messages from windows saying the device needs formatting!

One thing I tried was the HP USB format util which is useful for flash drives etc but this gave even stranger results!

See here for screen shots (sorry dont know how to put them directly on here)
2shared - download mp3player fault.rtf

As you can see the system files are visible but only AFTER formatting that drive! Weird!

Seems to be using a version of DOS 5.0 (which was always crap as I remember ) and curiously there is an NTLDR file which would seem to indicate NT/XP etc.

The total of the files in that folder (which seem totally inaccessible to windows) is about 12Gb curiously.

So its a deep mystery what is actually going on here but it does not sound too healthy.

ian

:(:confused:

I find that trying to follow the original format instructions the problem is here

Instead of the (suspected) size of 4Gb it is showing 16Gb whereas the instructions state that it will reflect the TRUE size of the drive

ian

This was subsequently fixed with the chkflsh method mentioned elsswhwere on here.

What they seem to have done is introduced another translation between the hard disc emulation (were you set the number of cylinders/sectors etc which determines the size of disc DOS expects to find) and the Flash read/write part of the controller firmware. As far as I can see the Flash memory controller firmware is on the same chip as its CPU and can't be modified.

See http://www.hyperstone.com/download.p...aper_flash.pdf
for some insight into how these things are arranged

ian

ps what I meant to say was this would tend to suggest an "inside job" because it requires the Flash Memory controller chip to be modded, someone somewhere in China probably is knocking out these modded chips by the million and selling them to unscrupulous manufacturers and then they outlet them via these peeps on ebay etc Organised major crime in other words!

Done a little more research and it sounds to me as the hack is in the USB Mass Storage Controller chip in the case of mp3 players and the SDHC interface chip which does much the same job in the SD flash cards that are hacked the same way. The reason why I think this is that to be able to fool DOS/Windows that the maximum available space (before even a partition is made) the fictitious figure MUST come from the Mass Storage Controller as the Flash Chip as manufactured is going to have to have a real figure for the amount of storage to be able to work at all.

The tools detailed on here enable a workaround, ie chkflsh and the mp3 Disk tool along with the H2tst memory test enable a) detection of the real size of Flash chip b) Reformat of the disc and b) Removal of the partition that was set during the hack.

Its interesting that by reformating and repartitioning the units can be set back to the 16GB or whatever they were originally setup as when hacked.

So, to sum up, I think the hack is in 2 parts. Part one is the USB Mass Storage Controller microcontroller program has a fictitious figure blown into it (this seems likely a programmable thing as the same USB controller would be used for many different sizes of flash memory so it would need to be set at manufacturing time but possibly there is a utility (probably originating by the manufacturer of the USB MSD) that can write the desired setting for the flash, eg 2GB 8GB 16GB whatever. Part 2 is the use of such as MP3 Disk Tool to set a partition size that agrees with the reported max size in the USB MSD. The fake is then complete. No matter how much you format it in DOS/Windows it will always be 16GB etc. It reminds me in the old days when Bios settings required you to look at the hard drive and copy the heads/cylinders/sectors etc to the Bios settings and it would then work out what size HD you had. If you set the settings wrong however sometimes it would accept the settings and say you had a much larger hard disc than actually fitted. The problem being when you actually came to read/write data to it!

One of the things I want to try is the old (MSDOS 5.0 onwards) FDISK utility with the /mbr switch to see if re-writing the Master Boot Record on these drives affects this hack or not.

The effects obtained using the HP USB format util are still not explained however. I suspect the operating system on the MP3 player chip is at fault there, it seems to copy its ROM into the flash area at boot time (maybe because it need read/write memory to work and not ROM) I wonder what the size of ROM in the mp3 player ship is? Maybe its 256MB as I suspect because thats approximately the amount of flash memory that seems to be missing.

Any comments/thoughts?

ian

Ians, i would like to point out that i have suspected the controller chip scam is an inside job for a while. I have tried to bring this to the attention of several large news media groups with no success. This is an indescribable abortion of justice on eBay's part and that of the US customs agency. I have done research into how many of these hacked devices are sold and the numbers are astonishing. There is a nonstop flow of hacked mp4 players rolling out of eBay, amazon, and wholesale companies like DHgate and MadeInChina. Sometimes the seller doesnt know about the hack and sometimes they do. I find that it is best to settle with a refund proportionate to the amount of memory you received based on what you paid for. Normally 75%. Then report the seller to SOSfakeflash and anyone else who will listen. I would not suggest leaving bad feedback after receiving a refund because this may anger the seller or eBay into giving you repercussions in various ways.

Unfortunately thats the ONLY way ebay will listen, when sellers get the red negative feedback and it is left in place ultimately their sales will suffer and so will ebays receipts of their fees.

These sellers are nasty people. They try to appear nice in emails but as soon as that red neg goes up the game changes completely. But don't worry, even if they try to set you up with a non paying bidder claim (yes ebays wondrous system allows them to do that even AFTER you have been recorded as PAID) ebay will have no option but to cancel any false claim because it will not stand up to any scrutiny. Sellers cannot legally demand you send a fake item back through the post because its illegal, just keep sending messages through ebays message system then there is a record of what has been said that cannot be easily disputed by ebay. At the end of the day ebaypaypal end up refunding you even if the seller does not.

Footnote to the above, where on Amazon did you see fake flash items? I had not realised there were any.

The only reason I suggest not leaving bad feedback is I've read stories of malicious sellers who actually hack your account or find other no doubt illegal ways of making you pay for your bad feedback. Furthermore if you wanted to scam the scammers you can order mp4 players fix them and demand a refund then upon completion hold out on your feedback until you get the inevitable "I pay you money you leave me good feedback" message and you can usually negotiate it to about $30 via PayPal for leaving a good feedback. If you want to let people know and still stay somewhat safe leave a good feedback that says something to the effect of "HACKED PLAYER DO NOT BUY HORRIBLE PRODUCT -refund received-" That's what I do anyway.

P.S. http://www.amazon.com/Exclusive-Pro-...901841&sr=8-26

But not leaving negative feedback does not warn other buyers in the future. One only has to look at the number reversed negs on sellers accounts sometimes running into 100s to realise they regularly coerce buyers to change their feedback. Negative feedback is also the only thing that affects a sellers power seller status, once they lose that they are on the slippery slope. Your ebay account is safe so long as its got a secure long password thats not been used anywhere else, eg your email account.

I would not have any worries about leaving negative feedback, what's the worse they can do? call you names?

Ian

As I said, people have had their PayPal accounts hacked and forced to pay for merchandise they didn't buy, and worse than that they enter you into a bidding war with another account that they own. Also eBay has been known to protect these sorts of people. I understand why you take the position you do, but i respectfully disagree.

The way to safeguard your Paypal (and other) accounts is not by letting fraudsters in Hong Kong off the hook! As I stated above the best way to safeguard your accounts is a proper password that nobody is likely to guess and that is unique to each account. Nobody will be able to hack your account if this simple precaution is taken. The other major source of security breaches is not updating Windows and having no Antivirus and Firewall software on your PC. Other than your concerns about security (which can easily be met) there really is no good reason to let these criminals get away with it.

Caution: Try this at your own risk (I am not an expert, A Senior Member should Evaluate).
I have Windows Vista. I had 3 fake memory MP3 Camera, Video, etc. players. Sizes advertised were 4GB, 16GB, 32GB. All were fake.
The partition fixes would not work for me because of the methods could not find the USB memories and partition them. Linux can. I had tried all else many, many times.

Get free Puppy Linux (lupu-501.iso) a small sized Linux System file at
http://puppylinux.org/main/index.php?file=Download%20Latest%20Release.htm
With ImgBurn (free), make a bootable CD (Less than 300MB). Set your boot sequence for CD first. Puppy runs from your memory and does not require an install. I used Gparted (from Puppy Menu) to delete the main partition. Reformat with Vista or XP to the true memory size.

wkmccoy

Not tried it but have heard others say Linux sees the correct size for partitions rather than the hacked size. You would still need to repartition the drive to the correct true size rather than the hacked size for DOS/Windows to be able to format it correctly. Simply deleting the partition then plugging it into a Vista machine may not work as Vista may not recognise the USB drive.

ians1,
Thanks for your input. My Vista does see the drives and does format them. It just will not partition them. I understand that is a Vista 'on purpose' feature. This worked for me when nothing else would do the job. After the main partition is deleted, sometimes the MP3 player formats itself to true size when you replug it in to your computer.

I tried just deleting all the partitions on the player, when you restart windows sees two drive letters, both 0 bytes, neither can be formatted.

I did however find that even on Vista chkflsh CAN be used without crashing. What you need to do is ignore the bit were it says "replug without dismounting" ie leave it plugged in and just click OK instead, else when you replug it you will get a BSOD. Shut chkflsh down and unplug the player then replug it. Two drives then exist, one the size you set and the other some arbitrary size.

After restarting the player and replugging as above, got to Format and choose quick format, one drive will fail with an error "wondows cannot complete the format" but the other should complete OK and be usable.

This DID require a partition of the correct size (as identified by the hstw memory test) being set with chkflsh utility first.

ps

You can only use chkflsh on Vista by right click and "Run as Administrator" otherwise Vista cannot see the drives.

On the chkflsh.exe file did you right click and choose "Run as Adminustrator", being logged in as an administrator is not the same thing, I found it worked when I did this.

I have never used puppy linux I use Ubuntu but I will get it and do some tests

:cool:

If it's ok with you i want to use this in a new guide like my one on chkflsh. I use ubuntu linux and windows 7.

chkflsh version 1.13 seems to see the partitions ok in Vista

You are very welcome to use it, but please try it and augment it. Ians1 does mention that when the partition is deleted, Windows may not see the drive to format it. I believe the MP3 itself may format it when it is replugged. Otherwise many of the other routines will reformat it.

I used Puppy because it has Gparted (a Linux partitioner) as one of its available routines under Menu > System > Gparted

Please let me know how you do, feel free to improvise..... I'm look forward to your new guide.

Keith

You have take 4GB of buggy shit from me and have give me 2GB of 100% useable space back. THANKS for your work to make the instruction from page 1.

Description Player with 2GB Space: New 4GB MP3 MP4 Player with Samsung Flash FM Radio Video


http://imgs.inkfrog.com/pix/lifeonline/Z_______14.jpg

Updates needed to the main post!
 

Okay, I just fixed my faked 4GB Chinese MP4 player to its actual capacity (1946MB). And it wasn't easy, because all the problems mentioned in this thread (and not yet answered, until now below) happened to me. Everyone who had the MP3 Utilities fail or ruin your player, well the good news is your player is probably still okay, but that utility is not going to help you. I wish the author of the original post would add a honorable mention that not all MP3/MP4 players will fix with his encrypted partitioning trick, but there are other ways to fix the player's disk size too.

----------------
I going to present this in separate parts:

0) Always run a CHKDSK.EXE on the drive and save the output before doing anything. Doing a backup absolute sector 0 (which may or may not be an MBR) also could be very helpful later if things go wrong.


1) MP3 Disk Tools complains: "Not detected removable disc! Please check the dics connecting, or reboot system!" (twice).
The utility then comes up but shows 0GB capacity. Chip Genius confirms this it is an Actions player.

This happened to me on the first computer I used. When I used the same software on another computer, I didn't get the message and was able to enter the utility and do the low level format re-partitioning.


2) The MP3 Disk Tools repartitioning steps do not reduce player's drive capacity. After moving the slider back to the left, it just went back to 4GB. No help at all!

You're going to have to try the disk partitioning trick in #6 to get the file system reformatted to the correct size.


3) MP3 tools hangs after pressing START while doing the formatting operation (either after sliding to the right, or after sliding it back to the left).

First, be patient. It might be normal delay. However, after maybe 10 minutes, it probably isn't going to come back and you are going to have to abort it. You can still click the CLOSE button even with the wait cursor up, and it will close too! The drive will be missing. When you unplug it and replug it in, your MP3 drive capacity might be 17MB. Mp3 player setup menu it says 0% of 00MB and Disk Error appears if you try to access the drive on the player itself. Try running the MP3 Utilties Disk Tools again. The hang was random for me. If it keeps hanging, you are going to have to try another approach (probably the hard disk partitioning trick in #6 below).


4) Windows recognizes the device when plugged in, but there is no new drive letter available!

For some reason, Windows lost the assigned drive letter for the player's drive while I was fiddling with these tools and changing its size properties. Go into Disk Management and right click on the drive and assign it a drive letter and it will become accessible again! BTW - If the drive isn't visible in Disk Management, Windows drive mounts are stored in the registry at \\HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices but make sure you don't mess up your C: drive's assignment!


5) The drive capacity is 17MB. Mp3 player setup menu it says 0% of 00MB and Disk Error appears if you try to access the drive on the player itself.

This is actually just the first drive appearing from the step where you expected two drives, but by itself. The rest of the space is there and can still be recovered. Try running MP3 tools again and repeat the process here. If that doesn't help, you'll need to try #6 below.


6) The player complains "Disk Error!" when trying to access the song/movie directory, etc.

Either running MP3 Utilities or Windows FORMAT changed the file system of the drive. Is it still FAT16 (or is it FAT32 or NTFS)? Did the utilties add an MBR? My MP4 player initially had no MBR and the drive would not appear in hard drive repartitioning utilities and could not be resized by Disk Management. One of these utilities added an MBR to my MP3 players flash drive. However, the player's firmware apparently doesn't know how to read an MBR partition table, and so just reports Disk Error!

Getting rid of the MBR can be a little bit tricky. I think MP3 Utilties itself did this to me, but FORMAT might have also. There is a silver lining in this event, and it is how I was able to finally resize my drive. Once the MBR is added, disk partitioning of the MP3 player's drive using standard hard drive partitioning tools (except Windows Disk Management, which doesn't like to partition USB drives) is now possible. And by partitioning the drive size down to the actual capacity, I was able to format the file system (using FORMAT.EXE x: /fs:FAT in the command prompt window) to the real capacity (in my case, it was really a 2GB drive and I sized and formatted it to a FAT16 to 1946MB with a 32KB cluster size). Don't accidently reformat C: or another hard drive by not specifying the proper letter of player's flash drive on the command line!

Once the file system was setup, moving it over the MBR is the last step. I rebooted into Linux to do this (I used Parted Magic Linux 5.5, but any Linux bootable CD including Puppy mentioned here or Knoppix, should be sufficient). Once at a command prompt, I mounted the MP3 player's USB drive and used DD to copy from the mounted drive into a file (you don't need to copy the whole 2GB since most of that is unused data area, just the initial sectors the hold the VBR, FAT and FAT backup, and root directory which are all at the front of the disk, in my case they turned out to be 561 512-byte sectors). Use a sufficiently large number to make sure you capture all the file system data to disk.

Next, unmount the Player's drive. But first, use the MOUNT command to display current mounts to make sure you know the device's raw access path! Next, I'd backup the current MBR (first 512 bytes of the device file), just in case this doesn't go right for you and you need to put it back. Also, be damn sure you have the right device path, as DD is merciless and could overwrite another hard instead if you don't have the correct path! Now, use DD again, but this time copy from the file system file you created directly into the device's raw path, overwriting the MBR with the VBR.

Once the DD write operation to the device is complete, try re-mounting the drive, and it should mount successfully and now the player can read the disk again! (using the device while connected to the computer caused an unmount with my MP4 player). Make sure Windows can also still access the drive. Make sure the drive no longer appears in your partitioning software (inexplicably, my did the first time I ran it, but the player still worked too and when I re-ran the program then it was gone!) Finally, of course, re-test the drive with H2TESTW to make sure you got the size small enough to avoid exposing the fake capacity to the file system (use CHKDSK.EXE to help determine that, being aware that the BOOT record, FAT file system, and root directory structures are *not* included in the reported disk size!).

--------------
AGAIN, this message is now buried at the end of a very long thread, so I sure wish the original posting author would update their write-up to mention that his solution does not always work anymore but there are other solutions in the thread. Fact of life, unfortunately, is to get good deals on USB Flash drives and MP3 players now means you have to be prepared to fix the usual faked capacity.

fake mp4 player is too much in china .don't believe cheapest prices . don't believe you could get 8GB MP4 with 4GB price .please carefully check your merchant for prices .

i have imported from china many years , well , i was scamed for many times . so with rich experience , i know the prices for real prices for MP4. i never buy low cost mp4 ,because that's impossible . anyone who want to buy real memory mp4 player can ask me ,maybe i could help you . any questions please ask me .

goodnight all i have tried the steps mentioned on the front page and i get the "Not detected removable disc! Please check the dics connecting, or reboot system!" (twice). what else can i do to bypass this, also my mp4 player was supposed to have 1 gb memory i ran the tests and response is that it only has 197 memory, anyone know how else i can fix this

firmware version is
Mp4 player
CBD Co.,LTD
2010-04021
9.5.60
this is the model by PASBUY
website www.pasbuy.com anyone have any other suggestions?

Fix MP4 digitial player with ACTIONS 9.5.x firmware
 

You should open your player up and check the numbers printed on the flash chip to find what actual capacity it is supposed to be. If H2testW is telling you only 197MB is OK and the remainder (755MB?) is bad, and this is littered throughout the drive (as opposed to being concentrated in the front or back area), maybe your player is a genuine 1GB player but they sold you one with defective flash memory instead.

BTW - The MP3 Utilties disk tool encrypted partitioning trick never worked for me - I've alway had to use other disk partitioning tools instead. However, every fake MP4 player and USB player I've seen so far has just been reporting the wrong size so the format utility will allocate available space in the file system beyond the end of the actual device's capacity. This I have remedied by either adding an MBR and using hard disk partitioning techniques (which the MP4 player also understands), or using Linux's mkdosfs command with the drive size override option specified.

PS: I am uploading my 9.5.60 firmware tonight if it hasn't already been posted, but don't consider reflashing your device except as a last resort and when you are already confident of the device's true size.


CP

Hello, I bought two of the 8GB, Gen 5 nano clones on ebay. I ran the H2testw program on both units, one unit appears to be a 2GB, not an 8GB, the other one tests OK at 8GB ( well 7408MB)

I am trying to figure out how to "Un hack" the 2GB unit, but the old process doesn't work, and I have never used linux so the newer guide on here is not very linux-newbie friendly. And I have no clue how to create a new MBR.

So,
first the simple question, is there a relatively easy way to fix these newer 5th gen clones? And if there is, does anyone know where there is a guide that either doesn't use linux, or explains the linux steps in layman terms?

Thanks

Linux has become much easier to use than it was a few years ago. And it has always included the system tools that let you access the disk directly, since drives can be easily mounted and unmounted and accessed directly just like editing a file.

You don't even need to install Linux on your PC anymore in order to use it, as the most popular distributions like Puppy, Knoppix, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva, etc. can boot directly from CD and create a RAM disk for the runtime file system. Mac OS X is pretty much equivilent for this purpose too. Once in Linux, you can unmount the flash drive and then reformat it at a command prompt in the terminal shell window as indicated here...

Hi guy, I have also me an mp3 player like ipod (actions hd ) with a fake firmware is a real 2GB with 16gb firmware(9.5.60)
anyone have firmware 9.5.60 for 2 gb?
thank you
Max

Can someone help me to remove the hacked memory from this mpx player please? I need it to work, its a fun hardware but its sucks when I don't know the real capacity and overload, also, do you guys know what is the biggest SD card capacity that will work?

anyone can help me. I bought mp4 player from ebay here is link 8GB 2.2" TFT LCD Shakable MP4 MP3 FM 5th Video Player | eBay
and after using 3Gb memory player can not read files after it . how can i solve this problem. Thanks.

I really thank you for this guide. I have just bought a cheap mp4 player, the first one for a little girl. I was too lazy to check the current prices, so I bought from ebay a "16gb" player for 30 euros shipping included from Netherlands. Reading errors soon appeared, files with nonsensical metadata (date, size of several gigabytes) showed up in a new repertory I had just created, directories began to duplicate...
It turns out it is a 4gb player, not so bad after all, but I have written back to the seller (grazy*gadgets)so that others are not ripped off. I see that he has other players in stock :
★ 16GB Mp4 / Mp3 / FM / VIDEO SPELER Zwart + USB Kabel Oortelefoon Handleiding ★ | eBay

http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/6...16gbplayer.jpg

As a side note, I followed the old guide (http://mympxplayer.org/image-vp52076.html) and succeeded to format with MP3 Player Disk Tool the player back to its original 4gb NAND size. At the beginning, the memory appeared encrypted and couldn't be formatted on a windows PC.
I have registered here to thank the admin and let the people know that such a 16gb MP4 player is.... dubious.

my player doesnt turn on at all. what do you suggest I do now?

espowsong, you should be more specific : what model exactly (link to site of purchase?), what did you do to try to turn it on? wer'e you able to turn it on before, or is it a brand new player? explain with as many details as possible, then maybe someone can help.
On the one I have just purchased, you have a slider you have to set on the ON position (not written), then you push on menu (UP) ; keep pressing a few seconds if it is needed.
Of course maybe you have to charge the device a bit if it is brand new (or kept unused for a long time). But the thing is, you have to turn the device ON to be able to charge it up! (that could be a problem with a fully depleted battery)