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[brak_brak]

Now here's a reason to be thankful for having only a 4GB Zen instead of a 16GB one:  About every third time I try to sync my Zen, I have to reformat it and copy every file all over again because it can't tell that the music already on the Zen is the music that it already put on the thing.  So I have to reformat and start all over.  All I am trying to do is copy a handful of new files to my Zen so that I can update my music playlists.  But about every third time, MC13's sync will lock up.  This will happen whether I'm playing music or not.  It doesn't seem to be the Zen's problem, since the music is there, MC13 just eats the playlists if the sync doesn't complete. 

I think that the trouble started when I began using MC instead of Audible Manager to transfer Audible files.  I've always hated Audible Manager, and this was one of the reasons that I upgraded from MJ.  I'm also using it to transfer a handful of photos and podcasts.  Come to think of it, the real problems started when I tried to transfer a photo of an evil squirrel who once bit me.  Maybe it's all the squirrel's fault. 

Does anyone have any suggestions for resolving sync problems with a Zen?  I haven't found anything posted to the forum on this particular problem.  I also freely admit to not truly understanding the sync process, so pointers to information on that process might be in order.  It shouldn't be this complicated, tho....

[brak_brak]

OK, I've done some testing, and have narrowed the problem down to the setting to "Delete from handheld any files not in sync list."  Then I found another (old and unanswered) post in this forum with a similar problem with Zens and this setting.  Unchecking the setting lets the Zen and MC13 work together pretty well.  That is, until I want to delete some files from a playlist.  Then, I either have to manually delete each file from the player after removing them from all of my synchronized playlists, or I get to watch my Zen lock up while MC tries to synchronize with it.  Or, if they do communicate, MC deletes over half of the files and has to re-synchronize everything.  It may have been faster if I had simply reformatted and started over. 

I'm using a mix of low-bitrate files of audiobooks and podcasts and higher bitrate music files, plus audible.com files and a handful of *.jpg photos, if that makes any difference.  Thanks for any suggestions. 

[brak_brak]

I realize that nobody cares, but I'm documenting my progress in case someone lurks here in the future and has the same problem. 

For some reason, MC is showing pairs of duplicate files in place of single files for almost every file on my Zen.  Thus, when the time comes to sync, the "Delete files..." feature may actually be acting properly in deleting what it thinks is a duplicate file, but is really the only copy of the file.  Pressing the recheck sync button does not force a re-read of the device, as far as I can tell.  Possibly the duplicates are an error with the software, and possibly it's an error with the device.  The duplicates do not appear on the Zen when it is undocked.  I'd love to know if anyone else has experienced the problem of duplicate files appearing in MC when a Zen is docked. 

[JohnT]

I can't repro this on my Zen Vision device. Do you sync with anything else (WMP?) between MC syncs? Can you give me a list of specific steps that I could try to reproduce the problem with?

[brak_brak]

It's a plain Zen 4GB, if that helps any.  I don't dock it with anything other than this computer and the only software that seems to talk to the Zen is the Creative Labs software (which isn't set up to sync anything), Media Center 13, and the annoying AudibleManager that I have to use to download files from them (although I use MC to put the files onto the Zen).  I have Media Monkey installed, but don't sync with it anymore, and have reformatted the Zen a couple of times since the last time that Media Monkey was even run. 

I wish that I knew what triggers the duplicate file listings to appear, because it just happened again.  I reformatted the Zen on Sunday night and reloaded everything, which takes several hours since it all has to be compressed, then have been listening to it for a couple of days.  I have deleted some files from the player itself in the meantime, since that's how I deal with already-read podcasts and mp3 audiobooks.  I just now docked the player, and it displays pretty much everything in duplicate, even the photos and audible-formatted files, which is something that I haven't noticed happening before.  The only exceptions seem to be the 20 or so mp3 files that MC thinks were missing (although I know that some of those files were not actually missing because I have listened to them in the past couple of days).  I think that there is something going wrong in how MC reads from the Zen. 

I wish that I could give you more specific information than this, because I want to get a 16GB device and use it with MC, but that's just not going to work under these circumstances.  Arrrgh.  This is so frustrating. 

[dancallaghan]

I have the exact same problem with my Zen4GB.  Any advice from anyone greatfully recieved!

[wnshall2]

I have similar problems with my Zen 4GB.  I haven't noticed files listed in duplicate, but I occasionally-to-frequently encounter the problem that after syncing with MC the Zen will have lost some-to-all of the playlists.  However the *files* are still there.  Usually re-syncing with MC doesn't help, but deleting some files from the Zen and then re-syncing often will.  I'm only syncing mp3s, and this happens with both Jukebox and now MC13.  In my case I suspect the problem may be because the Zen is completely full after syncing -- maybe not leaving enough room to put on the playlist files?  I haven't experimented enough yet.  BTW, I do have the "delete files from handheld not in playlists" checkbox checked.  I haven't played with unchecking it yet.  I realize none of this is precise or detailed enough for real user support, just thought I'd chime in to let people participating in this thread that there are more of us out here with this (or a similar) problem.

[bunglemebaby]

To add to the fun, I've gotten similar issues with my Sansa C240 and E240.
The E240 began having this problem after I upgraded my Rockbox to v3. The C240 has original Sansa firmware on it.

I get duplicate files also. I get files missing from the device too. I also wind up with old playlists remaining on the device, with no files in them, so there winds up being a list of a hundred or so playlists to sort through, most of which are empty. The files and playlists showing/missing differ depending on whether I boot into the Sansa firmware or the Rockbox firmware when using the E240. I believe that both firmwares use the same directory structure on the device.

I'm wondering if I actually should have posted this to its own new thread, but enough symptoms seemed similar to add it to this thread.

-JB

[brak_brak]

I found a workaround to this problem on my Zen.  It involves forcing a cleanup whenever the data gets corrupt--in my case, about every third synchronization.  With the Zen, you stick a paper clip into the reset hole, hold down the play button, then power on the device.  This brings up the system menu where you can choose to Clean Up the device.  You can also reformat here, so be careful.  After cleanup is done, choose reformat and wait for the Rebuilding screen to pass, then you can use your system again.  You may still see duplicate files in MC, but the problem with files appearing to be gone and needing to be re-uploaded goes away, saving vast amounts of sync time (especially if you convert).  I have given up completely on using the Zen for podcasts, because those require too-frequent synchronization.  Maybe the problem lies with how the Zen manages its memory, in that it doesn't deal well with having things deleted and replaced frequently? 

[wnshall2]

Just an update to my earlier post.  When loading up the Zen I have made an effort to leave some empty space and not fill it right up to max capacity.  Also, I've unchecked the "delete files from handheld ... " option.  So now I use MC to delete tracks off the Zen by hand*.  This adds a step to the work flow, but it's not that bad.  Also, I found that undocking the Zen after deleting tracks so that it updates its database helps -- in the past sometimes if I deleted tracks and then sync'd right away MC would get hung up or lose playlists and other nastiness as discussed above. 

Since I've adopted these steps I haven't had any problems with double tracks, losing playlists, etc.  YMMV.

*I still find that MC occasionally hangs while deleting tracks from the Zen.  It displays the "Deleting ..." dialog box, but just sits there and sits there and never returns.  I have to kill MC (from taskmanager) and undock the Zen, which forces a database rebuild.  Usually a random number of tracks will have been deleted, but not all the ones I selected.

[brak_brak]

I couldn't delete tracks at all with MC13 when running it on WinXP, but can now do it just fine with Win7, which is an oddity, but one I'm grateful for (yes, I know I should upgrate to MC14, but I am fed up with MC support again and am not ready to give them any more money).  I gave up on the "delete files from handheld..." option a long time ago, and haven't even tried it with Win7.  Things work pretty OK for now and I don't want to mess them up.  I reformatted my Zen maybe three weeks ago and on the second sync after reloading everything there were duplicate tracks.  The thing is impossible.  It's durable, cute, handy, reasonably reliable, has good battery life, and fun, but can be downright contrary sometimes.  I'm still tempted to get another, larger Zen, but just got a phone with wicked battery life, so my problems may be solved.