I have a sandisk m230 and was wondering if there is a website for mods or help using this player. My main problem is making playlists which is hard for me to figure out. Sandisks website is no help to me. Anyone have this player or any of the M series players as I believe they are all the same firmware just larger and small memory sizes.
LOL yeah I have its pathetic its litterally 4 pages long and only mentions making a playlist with a small sentence but doesnt tell you anything about how to make one. Even their website has multiple questions on this subject and their solution doesnt say how to make playlists other than to use windows media player, it doesnt tell you if you have to upload the playlist to your sandisk or how it reads the multiple folders that sandisk creates. How does the playlist know to look into a specific folder to find an mp3? Because sandisks format isnt used by anyone else. Even the specific key presses to make a playlist on the unit itself doesnt work for me as I have not been able to duplicate the playlist creation method.
There is an online user guide at sandisk.com. But, there is not a lot of detail about how to perform certain functions. I got the M260 for Christmas and have been able to put files on it, BUT.. I can't get them to recognize anything but Song Title and original track number. No artist, album, year, genre, etc. I took it back to Circuit City guru's who told me that I had to go in and "pretend" to edit the properties in Windows Media Player-somehow they got it to appear when they did it in the store. But unfortunately I have not been able to get it to work. I will be going back to Circuit City again. Before going to CC, I called the help line at sandisk, which they had no idea why the artist would not show. Have you loaded any files on yours?
Yeah I can get it to work fine. This little player does everything through windows media player. You cannot do a darn thing on the unit itself however you can edit sort change through media player. Simply hook up the interface then use latest version of wmp use the right side interface and click on your player you will see folders within these folders you will see your music (I hate the folders). I dont use the genre function or artist however you can select these functions I think with playlists but this is my problem I cannot figure out how to use the playlists with this unit. You are suppost to be able to make a playlist within the unit itself by pushing the center round button while the song is playing and its suppost to mark the song with a checkmark yet I have never seen this check mark. Have you found any 3rd party website(s) for this unit?
Ok, if you're talking about the "Favorites" thing- mine says you can add 30 songs to the Favorites list. All you do is press and HOLD the center round button while the song is playing, then you get prompt "Do you want to add this song to Favorites and when the check mark is highlighted you hit the center button again to accept. Mine will do this- if the song is already in there when you press and hold it will ask if you want to delete it from Favorites instead of add. I have had more luck looking at the user guide online than trying to get anything from that little book or that mini cd. I think my problem is related to settings on WMP, very aggravating.
Update- I exchanged my M260 for a Creative Zen Nano Plus- went from 4gb to 1gb... but I copied the exact files the Sandisk would not recognize anything but song title and the new MP3 recognized everything. It recognizes folders, so if you have an artist folder, it goes through the different CD's, one by one. The LCD is smaller and harder to read, BUT.. it works with drag and drop just like the other one SHOULD have. Maybe I had a dud, I don't know, but the Circuit City guy seemed to know that if I had a SANDISK, that I needed to go into the Properties of the file and edit to get the artist to show up. I don't have time to do that to each file I want to add, sorry. Good luck with yours...
Hmmm my sandisk m230 uses drag and drop also in windows media player I simply drug the files I wanted 1 or 100's at a time over to the right window which is the sandisk or any other mp3 player. You then have to click transfer button and its done (after some time not much). As for the artist being displayed im confused on that one. I use the standard format (artist - song title.mp3) as you see on most servers. This is displayed on the window while the song is playing. If I didnt know the song from its sound I simply had to look at the window and I can see artist and name of song. So im confused at the trouble you had are you storing your mp3's using a different format title?
I believe the one I had was defective- because no matter what I did the LCD on the player would show the name of the song and "Unknown Artist". I was not trying to name it anything special, only to have my player display the correct info on the LCD, but no matter what the player only picked up Song Title. Also on the player you can go thru the menu's to select music by artist- all were UNKNOWN, Album titles were all UNKNOWN, genre, year, etc. The only thing you could scroll through that wasn't UNKNOWN was Song Title. It was NOT the wma or mp3 file itself that was missing the info, but for whatever reason the player was not able to pick that info up. I put the SAME files on my Creative Zen and it recognized everything- so the Sandisk had to be defective. With the Sandisk I could drag and drop from My Computer or go thru Windows Media Player, but no matter which way I transfered the files, it still wouldn't work right with the tags on the files.
Hmmm its just weird that your sandisk was defective in that way. Not impossible just weird. It almost sounds like an option was set on in the wma interface. Reason I say this is because you can control how the file is named in the sandisk through wma. Hmm I also have a creative labs zen which I dont use because its a hard drive and I like the smallness of the sandisk. Good luck with your creative mine has a battery problem with legacy batteries you cannot replace them which is a huge problem like the Ipod. If it doesnt have a conventional battery source I dont want it.
My Zen is Nano Plus and it runs on regular AAA batteries just like the Sandisk. It is a bit smaller than the Sandisk, and came with a nice silicone case with clip, whereas my Sandisk came with cheesy clear plastic case with no clip only loop to put on the armband. I went from 4gb on the M260 to 1gb, but I don't think that is going to be a problem. About the wma - I could take the file from my computer with all info listed, and drag it to the Sandisk. When I look at the same file once on the Sandisk- it would just say the title and .wma- all the other info would disappear. The guys at the store couldn't figure it out and I decided switching brands would be a good thing. One thing I really like better about the Zen is that it recognizes folders - the Sandisk ignored folders.
Just curious give me a typical mp3 file name on your system. Mine look like this "alice in chains - nutshell.mp3". This shows on my sandisk from right to left scrolling (while playing). I use the standard format most people use.
Mine had numerous lines; looked something like this (where it has Unknown Artist is SHOULD say "Gladys Knight&Pips"): Unknown Artist Heard it through the Grapevine (Scrolled) 3:02 (bar indicator-volume?) I think yours should show the same thing- Artist on top line, song title on next. It should not show the filename or .mp3. It is supposed to extract the track info from the file. If you go to the main menu and select Artist, does it list all the artists of the files you have in the player? So example can select Alice in Chains?
Yes it does do what you say. But im still wondering what your file names look like? Are you sure they are in a normal format like "alice in chains - nutshell.mp3"? What you typed isnt remotely the same thing. You showed your tag line which is part of the file not the filename. Did you ever figure out how to make playlists? Thats my problem.
First about the playlist, I got the distinct impression from the online user guide that the Favorites and Playlist were sort of the same thing. You can check it out yourself though. Their guide is so bad it just doesn't tell you specifics. Did you try to go to Sandisk.com and find the guide for your player? It's a little more info than in that teeny start-up book they give you. About the file names, I thought you were asking what my Sandisk player read, not what the filename showing on the computer was. And all of mine were in WMA format-not MP3 and listed in the artist folder with this type info: 01 Heard it through the grapevine Gladys Knight and the Pips Greatest Hits (Curb/Capitol) The "Properties" of the file lists all the proper info for the file, but yet the reader ignored everything but track name. Maybe my WMP has a funky setting in it, but that is why I went to the store and asked them what it could be. The guy there thought my files looked fine, but yet the other dude said to fix it you have to pretend to "Edit" properties - accept what is already there (because it was all there and correct) and click OK and bam.. the info showed up. But that was not a solution for me. I even uninstalled WMP and reinstalled, thinking if there was a screwed up setting it would clear it, but I could never get it right. Good luck with Playlist, if all else fails, call the toll-free number, they might have the answers you are looking for. Phone # is in that teeny little book.
Ditek we are just not communicating very well. What im displaying is the actual filename I dont know what your displaying: 01 Heard it through the grapevine Gladys Knight and the Pips Greatest Hits (Curb/Capitol) Never seen or used this before mine looks like this: alice in chains - nutshell.mp3 that is the filename you know the name of the file windows uses to locate the file. Whether its mp3 or wma doesnt matter same thing I have files that are wma also although I dont use it very much. I suspect your problem might be your weird or unknown file name where is the .wma???? is this all one filename? For the website I have read the wimpy manual and didnt help me much.
OH my...with your help I have finally seen the light!! You are very right about the weird or unknown filename. I went into WMP- then Tools, then Options, then Rip Music Tab, then looked at File Name. It was screwed up.. the only items checked were Track # and Artist (which makes sense because that's all that was showing), none of the others, like ARTIST or ALBUM!!! It's too bad Circuit City guys couldn't even figure that one out. BUMMER, Oh well, I think I will keep my Creative. Thanks so much for making me delve deeper into the filename issue and at least I have my answers. Good luck with the whole Playlist thing- my might want to call the toll-free number- hey it's free, nothing to lose! Thanks again.
Some rippers add all kinds of crap into the filename like (album title, track number, genre, year of release etc) all isnt neccessary and can confuse some devices. I wouldnt use them makes looking at your music hard very confusing. Never ever use the geek squad they blow. Ask the people here at afterdawn first. But if you need some interesting entertainment. Check out best buys geek squad on saturdays. Sometimes you get a real show. I watched a dude wire up a power supply on the mother board wrong and of course being the shock voyeur that I am said nothing. He smoked that power supply and mother fast. Best thing was he didnt unplug the computer for a long couple of seconds enough time to cook off the capaciters on the motherboard and cause a small evacuation of best buy do to the smell of the caps blowing (they smell like rotten eggs).
You should be able to erase music through windows media (wma). There is a way on the unit itself but the manual is totally lame. But I have seen it on the menu system. But I would use windows as this is the primary way to transfer files.
